Memories are Made of This

But ask me the atomic weight of uranium and I have no idea (In case you are curious to know the atomic weights you can find all of them here). Literally, 'nothing springs to mind'. Now why is that? Why can I tell you all about my couch from every angle, and yet a scientific fact that I once knew is totally absent?

Lets start by doing our Indiana Jones bit. Now, if you have ever watched any of the Indiana Jones series of films (I highly recommend them for strained brains everywhere); then you will know that Indiana is a somewhat dashing Archaeologist type, who, when he isn't being swooned at by girls in his lecture classes, is off around the worlds exotic hot spots looking for lost booty. Only, he cannot just stumble upon the stuff. The world is a big place, and to know where to look he has to follow a whole series of clues that through logical deduction lead him to find the goodies.

The brain is not too different. It is a wonderful piece of work. Dashing and attractive in its own wrinkled kind of way, and able to store away vast amounts of gold in its neuronal pathways. We swoon at its ability to solve problems, and curse at its seeming intractability to give up the facts that we felt sure were stored within. So, we need to give it clues.

Now, ironically with our rather boring old couch we do this automatically. We have an image of our couch that we can replay in our minds eye at will. But with our atomic number we are totally clueless. The number has no associative links. It employs no imagination. It has no particular location that we impart to it. And so, guess what…You forget it.

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Used in this way is it any wonder that your brain gives up? To help it out you need to create a compelling reason why it should remember.