Definition of human memory

We call "memory" that the basic skills that most of us have to retrieve the knowledge as well as events that have happened to us in the past. Since we base our understanding on time, how to move in one direction - forward - we rely on memory, the things we learned in the past, in order to keep us moving forward in this direction. Everything we do in this is based on memories of what has happened or has been learned in the past. The "memory" word comes from the greek myth of Mnemosyne. Mnemosyne was the mother of the muses. He must have complete knowledge of everything past, present and future. Without memory, we would not be able to go through our daily life with abstract thinking, and to perform most basic functions. Through our conceptual memory of the past, we are able to communicate with other people and create our own identity. What's more, the memory is the starting point for all media, as it allows us to create something and understand what is presented to us.

The way memory works is related to those parts of the brain as the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, the cortex and hippocampus. We can classify memories into three types: sensory, short-term and long term.

When we speak of "sensory memory", we refer to fractions of a second following the initial perception of an object. If you are able to look briefly something and immediately memorize the details, then this is an example of sensory memory. Usually, in these cases, when you are only able to see something for a few fractions of a second, you might feel like you've seen a lot more than you are able to describe. Using a special experiment involving a "partial report paradigm," the researcher George Sperling conducted some vital experiments in the realm of sensory memory. Sperling dozen letters arranged in three rows of four. He played in both low, medium or high tone, which would be their cue for what row of letters that had to act. The result of this experiment is that most humans can process at least twelve items with sensory memories, but it begins to degrade at a certain speed.

Some of the data that is perceived in a sensory memory will subsequently be transferred to a short-term memory. We call short-term memory capacity to recall something from several seconds to a minute ago. Usually four or five objects can be stored in short-term memory, although this number can be increased through a process that psychologists have come to call "chunking." If a group of letters, for example, is presented in meaningful rows instead of just scrambled, we can usually remember them for much longer.

Finally, there is long-term memory. In contrast to the memories in the short term and sensory, that disappear in a short period of time, long-term refers to memories that can be stored for a period up to several years .......