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Enigmatic brain!
Secrets of Brain

In a sense, your brain is more "you" than is any other part of your body, because it holds your emotions and the keys to your personality. Yet, if you were to look at your brain, you probably would deny any relationship to it. The brain is the consistency of soft cheese and weighs less than 1600 g (3lb), which is probably less than 3% of your body weight. But your brain is the essential "you". It is the origin of your secret thoughts and desires; it remembers your most embarrassing moment; and it regulates your other body systems so that they function harmoniously while you concentrate on other activities. So, let’s look at the secrets of brain to appreciate better how its many circuits are organized to accomplish these amazing feats.

The brain is the residence of our consciousness. It governs our capacity to think, learn, solve problems, reason, and remember. It also acts as center for control for virtually every other bodily process that we have. And, not surprisingly, it's an organ that requires excellent nutrition to function at its top capacity. When it comes to the brain, we may know which foods boost brain power and how it plays an intricate role in our overall brain health. However, there are some best kept secrets of the 3-pound mass of gray and white matter between our ears, which leave neuroscientists dumbfounded. Let's discuss some of the secrets of the brain that how it stores and recollects multitude of memories!

Brain at work Accessing memories and creating new ones, analyzing information, processing emotions and planning our actions.
How do we store and recollect the memories?

Your baby's first cry…the taste of your grandmother’s pickles...the fragrance of an ocean breeze. These are memories that make up the ongoing experience of our life -- they provide you with a sense of self. They're what make you feel comfortable with familiar people and surroundings, tie our past with our present, and provide a framework for the future. In a profound way, it is our collective set of memories -- our "memory" as a whole -- that makes us who we are. Most people talk about memory as if it were a thing they have, like blue eyes or a good complexion of their skin. But our memory doesn't exist in the way a part of our body exists -- it's not a "thing" we can touch. It's a concept that refers to the process of remembering.

For example; If you're riding a car, the memory of how to operate the car comes from one set of brain cells; the memory of how to get from here to the end of the block comes from another; the memory of riding safety rules from another; and that nervous feeling you get when another car veers dangerously close, from still another. Yet we're never aware of these separate mental experiences, nor that they're coming from all different parts of our brain, because they all work together so well. In fact, experts tell us there is no firm distinction between how we remember and how we think.

The brain organizes and reorganizes itself in response to our experiences, forming memories triggered by the effects of outside input prompted by experience, education, or training.
Retrieving memories

Memory is the biological phenomenon, rooted in the senses, that begins with perception. For example; consider - do you remember what you had for breakfast this morning? Remembering the plate full of yummy things and the flavor it has, are the different things processing at the same time in our brain. Each of these separate sensations traveled to the part of your brain called the hippocampus, which integrated these perceptions as they were occurring into one single experience -- your experience of that specific food. Experts generally agree that the hippocampus plays a role in the formation of new memories and in the detection of new surroundings, occurrences and stimuli. Damage to the hippocampus can lead to loss of memory and difficulty in establishing new memories. In Alzheimer's disease, the hippocampus is one of the first regions of the brain to be affected, leading to the confusion and loss of memory so commonly seen in the early stages of the disease.

Experts believe that the hippocampus, along with another part of the brain called the frontal cortex, is responsible for analyzing these various sensory inputs and deciding if they're worth remembering. If they are, they may become part of your long-term memory. The frontal lobes are linked to sensory and memory centers throughout the brain. Their primary job is to allow us to think things through and determine how to use information that is located elsewhere in the brain. Our personality lives in the frontal lobes, where emotions, problem solving, reasoning, planning and other functions are managed.

Memory retrieval, including recall and recognition, is the process of remembering information stored in memory.
Recall and recognition

The multiple bits of information obtained from different circumstances and environments are then stored in different parts of the brain . How these bits and pieces are later identified and retrieved to form a cohesive memory, however, is not yet known. Although a memory begins with perception, it is encoded and stored using the language of electricity and chemicals. Here's how it works: Nerve cells connect with other cells at a point called a synapse. All the action in your brain occurs at these synapses, where electrical pulses carrying messages leap across gaps between cells. The electrical firing of a pulse across the gap triggers the release of chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters diffuse across the spaces between cells, attaching themselves to neighboring cells. Each brain cell can form thousands of links like this, giving a typical brain about 100 trillion synapses. The parts of the brain cells that receive these electric impulses are called dendrites, feathery tips of brain cells that reach out to neighboring brain cells. Thus, with each new experience, your brain slightly rewires its physical structure.

The brain organizes and reorganizes itself in response to our experiences, forming memories triggered by the effects of outside input prompted by experience, education, or training. As we learn and experience the world and changes occur at the synapses and dendrites, more connections in our brain are created. These changes are reinforced with use, so that as we learn and practice new information, intricate circuits of knowledge and memory are built in the brain. If we play a piece of music over and over, for example, the repeated firing of certain cells in a certain order in our brain makes it easier to repeat this firing later on. The result: We get better at playing the music. We can play it faster, with fewer mistakes. Practice it long enough and you will play it perfectly. Yet if we stop practicing for several weeks and then try to play the piece, we may notice that the result is no longer perfect. Our brain has already begun to forget what you once knew so well.

To properly encode a memory, you must first be paying attention. Since you cannot pay attention to everything all the time, most of what you encounter every day is simply filtered out, and only a few stimuli pass into your conscious awareness. If you remembered every single thing that you noticed, your memory would be full before you even left the house in the morning. What scientists aren't sure about is whether stimuli are screened out during the sensory input stage or only after the brain processes its significance. What we do know is that how you pay attention to information may be the most important factor in how much of it you actually remember.

Have you ever wondered how you manage to remember information for a test?
The ability to create new memories, store them for periods of time, and recall them when they are needed allows us to learn and interact with the world around us.
Short and long-term memory

A memory once created needs to be stored (no matter how briefly) for it to be retrieved later on. Scientist’s think there are three ways that memories get stored. First and foremost is in the sensory stage; then in short-term memory and for some memories in long term memory. These three stages of storing memory function as a sort of filter that protects us from the flood of information that we are confronted with on a daily basis.

The inception of memory in the mind begins with its perception. It is during the perception that the information is registered in the sensory stage that usually lasts only a fraction of a second. It is the sensory memory that allows a perception such as a sound, or a touch or a visual pattern to linger for a brief moment after the stimulation is complete.

After this stage, the sensation is stored in short-term memory. Short-term memory is limited in its ability to store the amount of information. It can hold about seven items for no longer than 20 or 30 seconds at a time. Its capacity to store can be increased by employing various strategies. For example, a larger number like 8005840392 which may be too much for short term memory can be broken into chunks of smaller size as in 800-584-0392 to be able to store for longer duration in short term memory. Another approach could be to repeat the number to you there by resetting the short term memory clock.

Information that is important is gradually transferred from short-term memory into long-term memory. The more the information is used, the more likely it is to end up in long-term memory. Unlike sensory and short-term memory, which are limited and decay rapidly, long-term memory can store unlimited amount of information eternally.

Processing the information Processing the information Consider for a moment how many times a day you rely on your memory to help you function, from remembering how to use your computer to recollecting your password to log-in to your online bank account.
Processing the information

People tend to store material more easily on subjects that they already know or have inkling about it. This is because the information can be connected to the already related information that is stored in their long-term memory. That is why someone who has an average memory can still be able to remember a greater depth of information about one particular subject.

For most people long-term memory is synonymous to the memory itself. But most experts believe information must make its way through sensory and short-term memory before it gets converted as a long-term memory. Thus, the brain is the incredible machine that holds lot of memories within wiping the unnecessary!

References

Biology of humans – Goodenough, McGuire, Wallace https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/human-memory.htm