Page 40 - The Memory Program How to Prevent Memory Loss and Enhance Memory Power

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who tries to ride a motorbike for the first time can testify. So the nerve cells that store this
information are not made of concrete or steel, but neither are they like a bowl of jelly— maybe more
like a hard lump of Plasticine that changes its shape only with considerable force.

Skills and habits come under implicit memory. Classical conditioning and other types of memory,
which also fall into this implicit category, are related to simple reflex reactions, for example,
jumping away when touching a hot object, that we execute automatically in our everyday lives. But
when you think of “memory, ” you probably think of something else altogether: discrete events, like
recalling someone's birthday or where you went on vacation a few years ago. This type of memory is
called “episodic” or “event-related” or “explicit” memory. You have to make a conscious effort to
retrieve the explicit memory of a fact or event, unlike the implicit memory of knowing how to drive
a car. In this book, I generally use the word memory as it is commonly understood: explicit memory
of both short-term and long-term specific events.

For explicit memory, there are three elements to the sequence of remembering:

1. Acquiring information. Attention and concentration are key.
2. Storing the event or episode as a memory. Importance, meaning, and emotional impact of the
event determine if the brain will store it as a memory
3. Retrieval. This is the active process of bringing the memory into the forefront of
consciousness.

Facts about the Human Brain

It makes up 2 percent of body weight.
It consumes 25 percent of the body's glucose and oxygen for its energy needs.
It contains around 100 billion neurons, also called nerve cells.
Each neuron communicates via chemical messengers with hundreds of other nerve cells.
The brain may contain up to 60 trillion pieces of memory.
Mainly short-term, and some long-term, memories are located in the hippocampal and other
parts of the temporal lobe.
Many long-term memories have migrated from the hippocampus to reside in the frontal lobe.
Loss of nerve cells in the temporal lobe, and in parts of the frontal lobe, leads to memory loss.