Question

How is information about different categories stored in the brain?

Answer 1

Storage is the more or less passive process of retaining information in the brain, whether in the sensory memory, the short-term memory or the more permanent long-term memory. Each of these different stages of human memory function as a sort of filter that helps to protect us from the flood of information that confront us on a daily basis, avoiding an overload of information and helping to keep us sane. The more the information is repeated or used, the more likely it is to be retained in long-term memory (which is why, for example, studying helps people to perform better on tests). This process of consolidation, the stabilizing of a memory trace after its initial acquisition, is treated in more detail in a separate section.

• There are many different types of memory

• Specific cortical (both old and new) and non cortical areas process different types of memory or different aspects of memory

•Learning and memory occur over time and involve many different individual events, for example attending, encoding (learning), and retrieving (the memory)

•All memory involves changes occurring as a result of experience (learning) that allow the organism to alter future behavior based on past experience

->Different areas of the brain control different functions; thus, damage to a given area causes a specific loss of function.

• The cortex is involved in “higher - order” functioning, e.g., voluntary thought and movement and subjective experience.

• Neurons are the fundamental cell of the nervous system; neurons communicate with each other at synapses ; communication is “electro - chemical”.