Stage One Acquisition - How We Remember: Improving Memory Understanding Age Related Memory Loss

Content provided by the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School

Stage one: Acquisition

It's common sense: To remember anything, you must first learn it. When new information is learned, or acquired, it first takes the form of temporary pathways of nerve cell activity in the brain, as one neuron communicates with the next. The location of these neuronal pathways depends on the nature of the information. For example, activities such as speaking and writing activate neurons in the left temporal lobe, which processes language for most people, whereas studying a map activates neurons in the right parietal lobe, which processes spatial information (see Figure 2).

The neuronal activity that represents the information you've just learned is temporary, and the new information is part of your short-term memory. Most of this information will quickly fade away. The memories that endure will be those that were encoded most completely in the first place — the information that you paid the closest attention to when you learned it. When you have trouble remembering a piece of information, it's often because you weren't paying close attention when you initially encountered it. One of the reasons older people have more trouble remembering things is that they are more easily distracted by background noises and other interruptions, which can interfere with initial learning. Memories that involve multiple senses as well as emotions are more likely to be retained.

Last updated:	January 23, 2007