We all know what memory is and what it is for, however not everyone knows how it works and what its peculiarities are, beyond storing the information that surrounds us.

In this article we will briefly explain how this information is stored , in order to understand the curiosities that characterize it and make this function a mystery that has not yet been completely solved.

Curiosities about memory: how does it work?

In order to understand the singularities that human memory entails, it is first necessary to know how it works, or what elements or steps it follows from the time we perceive a thing until a memory is formed about it.

Memory is that function of the brain that is in charge of encoding, saving and rescuing all the information acquired in past moments. Depending on how distant that past is, memory is divided into short-term memory and long-term memory.

This memory is made possible by the synaptic links between the neurons, which are connected repeatedly to create neural networks. Likewise, the hippocampus is the main brain structure related to memory, so its deterioration or injury will cause numerous problems in it.

However, there are many other systems related to memory and each of them has special functions depending on their characteristics. These systems include certain regions of the temporal cortex, the central area of the right hemisphere, the parieto-temporal cortex, the frontal lobes and the cerebellum.

Knowing that there are different steps in creating memories, it will be easier for us to understand what curiosities our memory contains . Given that these can occur both when encoding external information, as in the moments when our brain stores it or when we try to recover or evoke a memory.

6 fun facts about memory

Due to the complexity of the systems that involve the creation and recovery of memories, memory buries numerous curiosities both in relation to its own functioning and in relation to diseases or syndromes, which alter it in many unexpected ways.

1. Our brain creates false memories

Not everything we remember is true or has happened in real life . False memories consist of the recovery in the memory of an event or situation that never really existed.

If we go back to the steps that memory follows to create a memory, the first of all is to perceive and encode the external information. When these external stimuli are too much or too intense our brain can be overloaded, and the association processes are altered creating false memories.

The same happens when we talk about traumatic situations or experiences, the creation of false memories are a defense strategy of our mind to protect us from memories that can affect us in a harmful way.

Therefore, a false memory cannot be considered a lie, since the person who is recounting the experience believes blindly that it happened that way.

2. The Mandela effect

Closely linked to the previous point is this curiosity of memory known as the Mandela Effect. In the case of the Mandela Effect, these false memories that we spoke of earlier are shared by a large part of the population.

The best example to explain it is the one that gives it a name. In 1990, when Nelson Mandela was finally released from prison, it caused a great stir in a large part of the population. The reason was that these people were sure that Nelson Mandela had died in prison, and they even claimed to have witnessed his death being reported on television, as well as his burial. However, Mandela died 23 years later from a respiratory infection .

Therefore, this effect describes the phenomenon in which a large number of people remember, almost exactly, an event or events that never happened as such or that do not coincide with what reality dictates.

3. Cryptomnesia

The phenomenon of cryptomnesia is that by which a person recovers a memory from the memory but nevertheless does not live it as a memory, but as an original idea or experience.

In this case the person believes that he or she has had an idea for the first time, a result of his or her creativity and imagination, but is not aware that it is actually a memory hidden in the memory that he or she may have thought of before or seen or read about elsewhere.

4. Hypermnesia

The capacity for hypermnesia, or hyperthymesia, is the ability to recall or recover from memory a much greater number of memories than most people can access.

People with hypermnesia are very fast at coding, saving and retrieving what surrounds them ; so they are able to remember any situation or experience with an amazing amount of detail and information.

However, it should be noted that this hypermnesia or capacity to store a large amount of information is restricted to autobiographical memory. That is to say, to the memory that stores all the aspects or situations that we live throughout our lives.

5. The brain only keeps what is important and the mind creates the details

A study conducted at Harvard University by professor and psychologist Daniel L. Schacter , revealed that each and every time our brain recovers a memory, it is modified.

This means that our brain only keeps the important information or with emotional content but the rest of the details of what we have experienced are not stored, being added and invented later by our mind.

The aim of this phenomenon is to avoid overloading the memory with unnecessary details in order to hold as much relevant information as possible.

6. Memories depend on context and emotions

Learning and storing memories depends largely on how and where, just as it depends on how we feel.

This means that depending on where we are, it will be much easier for us to recover memories of situations experienced in that same place.

With emotions it works the same way, according to our state of mind memory will tend to rescue memories in which we experienced those emotions . That is, when we are happy or joyful it is easier for us to remember situations in which we were also happy or joyful.