1. Acquiring information. Attention and concentration are key.
2. Storing the event or episode as a memory. Importance, meaning, and emotional impact of the event determine if the brain will store it as a memory
3. Retrieval. This is the active process of bringing the memory into the forefront of consciousness.
Facts about the Human Brain
It makes up 2 percent of body weight.
It consumes 25 percent of the body’s glucose and oxygen for its energy needs.
It contains around 100 billion neurons, also called nerve cells.
Each neuron communicates via chemical messengers with hundreds of other nerve cells.
The brain may contain up to 60 trillion pieces of memory.
Mainly short-term, and some long-term, memories are located in the hippocampal and other parts of the temporal lobe.
Many long-term memories have migrated from the hippocampus to reside in the frontal lobe.
Loss of nerve cells in the temporal lobe, and in parts of the frontal lobe, leads to memory loss.
Short-Term versus Long-Term Memory
Explicit memory can be short-term (seconds to hours) or long-term (days to years). short-term memory has limited capacity, but long-term memory has a lot of available disk space to store data. A simple example illustrates this point: you may find it difficult to repeat more than two new telephone numbers recited consecutively to you, but you can easily recall several telephone numbers that are in long-term storage in your brain. This simple fact tells you that the mechanisms by which the brain stores short-term and long-term memories must be different.
Taken From: The Memory Program How to Prevent Memory Loss
and Enhance Memory Power
