- Memory is a complex and often misunderstood topic and remains an active area of scientific research.
- Memory loss can be a symptom of dementia, but everyone experiences memory loss at some level.
- A new book highlights some of the insights, challenges, and mysteries of this field of study.
Chances are high that your memory doesn’t work the way you think that it does.
Or at least that’s one of the central tenets of The Psychology of Memory, a new book written by psychologists Dr. Megan Sumeracki and Dr. Althea Need Kaminske.
If your memory does seem to be declining, you don’t need to necessarily fret. It’s quite common.
Indeed, memory is a messy and imprecise function of our brains. It still holds many mysteries both physiologically and psychologically that researchers are actively attempting to solve.
While we may be a long way from definitively describing the precise mechanisms of memory, experts do have some useful information about how it can fail and what we can do about it.
Perfect memory is rare.
Most people are familiar with the experience of forgetting, but why can’t we simply just remember everything?
“The answer to this question is very complex,” Dr. S. Ahmad Sajjadi, a neurologist at UCI Health as well as an associate professor of neurology and chief of the Memory Disorders Division at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine, told Medical News Today.
“Having a ‘perfect memory’ can lead to redundant information, inability to cope with adversities in life due to persistent memory, and unnecessary increase in energy requirement for brain that already consumes 20 percent to 25 percent of whole-body energy,” Sajjadi explained.
Dr. Alex Dimitriu, an expert in psychiatry and sleep medicine and founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine in California, summed it up for Medical News Today this way: “The brain is designed to run fast and smooth, and sometimes this means leaving out certain details while focusing attention on…
Read the full article here
