Memory

"What thousands and millions of recollections there must be in us! And every now and then one of them becomes known to us; and it shows us what spiritual depths are growing in us, what mines of memory."

"The people of the Qur’an (those who recite and those who memorize the Qur’an) will be in the highest level (in Heaven) from amongst all of the people with the exception of the Prophets and Messengers. Thus, do not seek to degrade the people of the Qur’an, nor take away their rights, for surely they have been given a high rank by Allah."

"I agree as to the doubtful value of competitive examination. The qualities which you really want, viz., self-control, self-reliance, habits of accurate thought, integrity and what you generally call trustworthiness, are not decided by competitive examination, which test little else than the memory."

"'The method of loci', an imaginal technique known to the ancient Greeks and Romans and described by Yates (1966) in her book The Art of Memory as well as by Luria (1969). In this technique the subject memorizes the layout of some building, or the arrangement of shops on a street, or any geographical entity which is composed of a number of discrete loci. When desiring to remember a set of items the subject 'walks' through these loci in their imagination and commits an item to each one by forming an image between the item and any feature of that locus. Retrieval of items is achieved by 'walking' through the loci, allowing the latter to activate the desired items. The efficacy of this technique has been well established (Ross and Lawrence 1968, Crovitz 1969, 1971, Briggs, Hawkins and Crovitz 1970, Lea 1975), as is the minimal interference seen with its use."

"Demonstrations of limitations in the way humans process and store information have generated much controversy among researchers in the cognitive sciences. A major theme concerns the capacity of working memory. Separate verbal, spatial, and visual object working memory systems can be distinguished (1-3), but similar estimates of their capacities have been established. These estimates have sometimes been made in terms of “magical numbers,” which have ranged from seven to about four words, numbers, or locations (4). In line with these results, recent studies suggest that it is possible to retain information of up to four objects in visual working memory (5-9)."

"Young and old participants were evaluated on tests of frontal lobe function, recognition memory, and memory for temporal and spatial information. Older participants showed significant impairments on memory for temporal order, and this impairment was found to correlate with deficits on frontal lobe tests measuring spontaneous flexibility but not reactive flexibility. However, spatial memory showed no evidence of an age effect. An interpretation of this latter finding based on the differential availability of contextual cues is ruled out because similar results were obtained when spatial memory was assessed in a different context to that used during learning. The researchers concluded that memory for temporal order and spatial memory are affected differentially by age. Theoretical interpretations of this difference are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)"

"I was in downtown New York on with a friend and we were there at the when it fell. We had this huge life-changing day together. Several years later, we sat down and we talked about that day and it was as if we had been on different planets. We remembered every single thing about the day differently. Memory is unreliable and yet we are completely positive that we are right."

"Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it—only then—for the first time."

"If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered."

"The pure memories given To help our joy on earth, when earth is past, Shall help our joy in heaven."

"It is notorious that the memory strengthens as you lay burdens upon it, and becomes trustworthy as you trust it."

"What is to be remembered, I suppose I remember; everything else dissolves and vanishes: breath on an icy mirror."

"In proportion as the present supplants the past, states of consciousness disappear and are effaced. After a short time but little remains; the greater part are veiled in an oblivion whence they never emerge, and they take with them the quantity of duration inherent in each; consequently, the elimination of states of consciousness is an elimination of time. Now, the abbreviated processes... suppose such elimination. If, to reach a distant recollection, it were necessary to traverse the entire series of intervening terms, memory would be impossible, because of the length of time required for the operation."

"We arrive, then, at this paradoxical conclusion: that one condition of memory is forgetfulness. Without the total obliteration of an immense number of states of consciousness, and the momentary repression of many more, recollection would be impossible. Forgetfulness, except in certain cases, is not a disease of memory, but a condition of health and life. We discover here a striking analogy with two essential vital processes. To live is to acquire and lose; life consists of dissolution as well as assimilation. Forgetfulness is dissolution."

"Knowledge of the past (and here we are led back to the functions of vision) may... be compared to a picture of a distant landscape, at once deceptive and exact, since its very exactitude is derived from illusion. If we could compare our past, as it has really been, fixed before us objectively, with the subjective representation which we have in memory, we would find the copy formed upon a particular system of projection: each of us is able to find his way without trouble in this system, because he has himself created it."

"I can't compete with a memory How can I fight with someone that I can't see? There's two of us but it feels like three I wish her ghost would just let us be Boy you're everything I ever wanted But I got to let you go 'cause this love is Haunted."

"Thou first, best friend that Heav'n assigns below To sooth and sweeten all the cares we know"

"Sweet Memory! wafted by thy gentle gale, Oft up the stream of Time I turn my sail."

"All people have a natural curiosity about their own memory. This curiosity was tweaked several years ago by reports in the popular press of recovered memories from early childhood. These reports also renewed a long-standing debate bout whether infants can actually remember for any length of time. Some researchers argue that infants possess only a primitive memory system that cannot encode specific events (Mandler, 1998), that early development is characterized by "infantile amnesia" (the absence of enduring memories; Pillemer & White, 1989), that children cannot remember events until they can rehearse them by talking about them (Nelson, 1990), and that children younger than 18 months are incapable of representation (Piaget, 1952); others argue that the behavior of older infants and children is shaped by their earlier experiences (Watson, 1930) and that adult personality is shaped by memories of events that occurred in infancy (Freud, 1935). Surprisingly, this debate has been waged in the absence of date from infants themselves. This article reviews new evidence that infants' memory processing does not fundamentally differ from that of older children and adults. not only can older children remember an event that occurred before they could talk, but even very young infants can remember an event over the entire infantile-amnesia period if they are periodically reminded."

"After 24 weeks, it is difficult to say that the fetus experiences pain because this, like all other experiences, develops postnatally along with memory and other learned behaviours."

"It is hard now to leave a play and remember a line because they are all in prose."

"Women and elephants never forget an injury."

"Memory itself is an internal rumour."

"I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done."

"Converging lines of evidence indicate that stress either before or after learning influences memory. Surprisingly little is known about how memory is affected when people learn while they are stressed. Here, we examined the impact of learning under stress in 48 healthy young men and women. Participants were exposed to stress (socially evaluated cold pressor test) or a control condition while they learned emotional words and neutral words that were either conceptually associated with or unrelated to the stressor. Memory was assessed in free recall and recognition tests 24h after learning. Learning under stress reduced both free recall and recognition performance, irrespective of the emotionality and the stress context relatedness of the words. While the effect of stress was comparable in men and women, women outperformed men in the free recall test. These findings show a memory impairing effect of learning under stress in humans and challenge some assumptions of current theories about the impact of stress around the time of learning on memory formation."

"Stress before retention testing impairs memory, whereas memory performance is enhanced when the learning context is reinstated at retrieval. In the present study, we examined whether the negative impact of stress before memory retrieval can be attenuated when memory is tested in the same environmental context as that in which learning took place. Subjects learned a 2-D object location task in a room scented with vanilla. Twenty-four hours later, they were exposed to stress or a control condition before memory for the object location task was assessed in a cued-recall test, either in the learning context or in a different context (unfamiliar room without the odor). Stress impaired memory when assessed in the unfamiliar context, but not when assessed in the learning context. These results suggest that the detrimental effects of stress on memory retrieval can be abolished when a distinct learning context is reinstated at test."

"To conclude, our results suggest that stress can interfere with our ability to integrate context information into a memory trace. These findings might improve our understanding of the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders, such as the post-traumatic stress disorder in which the failure to connect the traumatic event with the appropriate (temporal and spatial) contextual information is a common pathological hallmark (Rauch et al. 2006)."

"Though yet of Hamlet, our dear brother's death, The memory be green."

"Remember thee! Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records."

"Die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year."

"Briefly thyself remember."

"That memory, the warder of the brain, Shall be a fume."

"I cannot but remember such things were, That were most precious to me."

"If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings, and the widow weeps... ...An hour in clamour and a quarter in rheum."

"I count myself in nothing else so happy As in a soul rememb'ring my good friends; And, as my fortune ripens with thy love, It shall be still thy true love's recompense."

"How sharp the point of this remembrance is!"

"Looking on the lines Of my boy's face, my thoughts I did recoil Twenty-three years; and saw myself unbreech'd, In my green velvet coat, my dagger muzzled, Lest it should bite its master, and so prove, As ornaments oft do, too dangerous."

"To reside in someone's memory, one must set aside selfishness, as selfishness and fond memories cannot coexist in the same space."

"Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad."

"The Right Honourable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts."

"Memory is the storage of acquired knowledge for later recall. Learning and memory form the basis by which individuals adapt their behavior to their particular external circumstances. Without these mechanisms, it would be impossible for individuals to plan for successful interactions and to intentionally avoid predictably disagreeable circumstances. The neural change responsible for retention or storage of knowledge is known as the memory trace, or engram. Generally, concepts, not verbatim information, are stored. As you read this page, you are storing the concept discussed, not the specific words. Later, when you retrieve the concept from memory, you will convert it into your own words. It is possible, however, to memorize bits of information word by word."

"The axe forgets, but the (cut) log does not"

"A man's real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor."

"Memory, for me, is often a home where the furniture has been rearranged one too many times."

"A model for visual recall tasks was presented in terms of visual information storage (VIS), scanning, rehearsal, and auditory information storage (AIS). It was shown first that brief visual stimuli are stored in VIS in a form similar to the sensory input. These visual “images” contain considerably more information than is transmitted later. They can be sampled by scanning for items at high rates of about 10 msec per letter. Recall is based on a verbal receding of the stimulus (rehearsal), which is remembered in AIS. The items retained in AIS are usually rehearsed again to prevent them from decaying. The human limits in immediate-memory (reproduction) tasks are inherent in the AIS-Rehearsal loop. The main implication of the model for human factors is the importance of the auditory coding in visual tasks."

"In vain does memory renew The hours once tinged in transport's dye; The sad reverse soon starts to view, And turns the past to agony."

"Converging evidence and new research methodologies from across the neurosciences permit the neuroscientific study of the role of sleep in off-line memory reprocessing, as well as the nature and function of dreaming. Evidence supports a role for sleep in the consolidation of an array of learning and memory tasks. In addition, new methodologies allow the experimental manipulation of dream content at sleep onset, permitting an objective and scientific study of this dream formation and a renewed search for the possible functions of dreaming and the biological processes subserving it."

"Eternal Memory of the dead lasts as long as they are paid with memory."

"Memory is fallible. Dreams overwrite the reality, fond fantasies inform the dreams."

"I’m telling it now. And I’m trying to remember how it actually was. Not just how I remember remembering it. But memory is a hard disk that overwrites itself constantly."