On Memory - Part II Relational Recall

In this, the second chapter of On Memory, (for the first chapter see http://used-ideas.blogspot.com/2012/11/on-memory-part-i-basics.html) the subject at hand is called relational recall, the recollection of deep memories by appropriate stimuli.  When it comes to memory literature, the most important topics you find are how to improve your memory through tricks and exercise, and how to better remember something.  You also see many technical studies examining short-term memory connected with various (physical) sense stimuli.  We’ll discuss a few of these below.   However, our main topic is the recollection of long term memories, those forgotten in the expanse of time.

Note.  You have probably irretrievably forgotten most of all your experience, whether, by cognizance or by physical sense.  Don’t believe even for a moment you can get it all back.  You can’t.  Don’t believe you use only 10% of your brain power – a philosopher’s statement.  Most of us use every bit of what we have.   The idea here is to find triggers to bring back some of your memories.  Events and experiences in deep memory are still there for the obvious reasons.  They are important, even seminal, in your life. Recollections are at best imperfect.

However, rarely do you see any reports on how to remember things past, things you experienced without further thought, and without any idea they may fade in time but maybe you now want them back.  You are just that, your life, your family, and your memories.   Here we attempt to discover a few methods to bring back lost memories.   There is the exception on how to better make memories can be sustained over long periods using the ancient memory technique called the method of loci.  We discuss this method in the next chapter.

Memory and the physical senses

The five senses.  First things first.  You have to varying degrees five senses, smell, hearing, touch, and taste.  Each will have a place in relational recall.  For example, have you ever heard a sound or smelled some odor that brought back a flood of memories from long ago?  This is the first idea of relational memory, to use your senses to recover what you thought was lost. 

a.       Smell.  Memory connected with smell has long been known but little understood.   This is partly because the olfactory neuron survives only 60 days.  However, the memories survive because the axons of neurons that express the same receptor go to the same site.  Yet technical problems remain. 

In addition, it is apparent that the memories connected with smell may be among your oldest, and certainly all of us have had that profound experience of suddently experiencing a flood of memory upon smelling something connected with the past.   The smell of Thanksgiving turkey and trimmings, or the annual Christmas tree always do this for me.  

Interesting experiments have recently shown that students learning in the presence of the vanilla odor have better recall in a room having the same vanilla odor than otherwise.  Indeed, vanilla has a most curious effect on recollection memory.   Vanilla is associated with warmth, softness and caring.   Other spices that seem to help improve memory are turmeric, rosemary, cumin, and sage.   For example, in a study published in the Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology, in a study where subjects inhaled rosemary extract, their short-term (less than a week) memory was improved. 

b.      Sight.  Most studies on memory and sight are connected with remember a list of items when presented visually.  There are differences connected with language and with the auditory system.  Other studies have shown that at least in youngsters there seems to be a connection with sight and mathematical ability.  Precisely, if the teacher holds up a picture and asks the students to copy it, there is little correlation with math ability.  However, if the teacher holds up a picture (usually some geometric diagram) for a few moments and then withdraws it, students that are better able to reproduce the diagram tend to be better in mathematics. 

c.       Hearing.  There are few studies on memory connected with hearing, other than it (auditory) is one of the three learning styles, the others being kinaesthetic and visual, and hence folks good at auditory learning have good memory connected with hearing.  There have also been studies on memory of lists being relatively compared with visual or auditory presentation.  There is a definite connection with the effect of lifelong training in music and with “memory and the ability to hear speech in noise.”  There are numerous studies on the subject for the hearing impaired.  However, I’ve had memories trigger by simply hearing a special name, or a type of sound.

d.      Touch.  Most of the work on memory and touch are conflated with memory and mental health and well-being.  In one study of Alzheimer patients, it was determined that a combination of massage and electrical stimulation enhance memory and problem solving abilities.  By the way one type of touch is temperature.  More on this later.

e.       Taste.  This is so widely connected with odor/smell, it is difficult to distinguish them.  Of course, there is the event recorded by Proust in his Remembrance of Things Past in which by merely tasting a cookie and sipping lemon tea he suddenly remembered an exactly similar event from 40 years previously. 

Memory and the Mental Senses

Mental senses. What is remarkable is that your mind has many more senses than just five.   Indeed there are at least nine of them.  You may think of more.   Consider these:  The sense of

• ·         Pictures – a picture, worth a thousand words - is iconic in the recollection of memories.  According to many this type of memory associated with imagery is the most powerful.  Even the ancients consider site or vision of the most powerful of senses. Naturally, most people keep some sort of picture album for at least this purpose – if not to reassure themselves they looked better once. 
• ·         Music – much of your past was experienced with the continual background of a certain music genre, say like big band, rock ‘n roll, country, or others.  Often your memories of the period are linked with the music.  Music is not only sound, but lyrics, beat, and often a story.  Instrumental music exhibits a complexity far beyond merely that of hearing.   It titillates the brain.
• ·         Dance – most of us don’t dance as much as we used to but as above your experience and memories before, during, and after are often associated with the dance, during which you were completely absorbed.  For some or many, “dance” could be substituted by other kinaesthetic activities, running, skiing, cycling…   Dance is jointly connected with music, rhythm, and movement making is a richer sense.
• ·         Space/Presence – the sense of space is concatenated with that of presence in peculiar ways.  Often, we have the experience that “I’ve been here before,” or “This is (just like) the place where I fell in love.”  It could be the quietude of a church sanctuary, or the visit to an auditorium, a baseball field.  Many others abound.  Is there any doubt that visiting your childhood home after several years will set in motion a parade of memories.  As another example, it has been established that students test better in the same room in which they learned than an alternate location.
• ·         Conversation – during a conversation you may hear a key phrase from long ago used in a similar context.  This may be the trigger to some set of past memories.  This is not unlike the flashbulb memory from the previous chapter.  Alternatively, at the end of a lengthy conversation you may find yourself in the same mental (emotional, intuitive, etc) state you were way back when.  Memories may be recalled.  You may have to hold this state to get the full benefit. 
• ·         Friend or enemy – you meet an old friend after even many years.  With the meeting comes a host of memories of the friendship, mutual other friends, memories of activities, school, work, or anything associated.  Sometimes, a picture will work, but not usually as well as the real McCoy.  Meeting an old enemy can have an even more profound effect, partly because we tend to block unhappy circumstances. 
• ·         Geometry – that particular shape, beautiful or ugly, has a singular effect on recall.  This sense is somewhat related to pictures, but is somewhat more general.  For example, if you see a person that looks almost exactly like someone significant in your memories, you will remember that distant person.  A particular configuration of buildings, trees, gardens can bring old memories to the top of you consciousness.   Scientists culture and experience this often and are frequently tuned to the visual expression of data similar to what has been experienced previously. 
• ·         Emotion – often a particular emotional state, such as a most joyful, embarrassing, stressful, or  moment,  will help you recall an almost identical one from the deep past.  Like the conversation, this one is more-or-less spontaneous. 
• ·         Victory or achievement – the emotional high that comes  with a victory or achievement seems to upload many associated memories with it.  I’m Green Bay Packer football fan.  When the Packers are doing fantastically well, my mind drifts back to many times when I so very much enjoyed watching them win.  A batch full of memories emerge of when, what, how, and the situations from long lost days.   Love it.

There is a special human pleasure in relational recall.  I believe people often put themselves into one of these physical situations to engender the required mental states for exactly the purpose of relational memory recall.  Family and class reunions are among the most recognized types.

So, we have two channels for deep memory recollection, physical and mental senses.  The possibility of using your mind’s multiple senses is another way to recall lost memories.  Let’s look at the physical senses first.

Senses of the Mind. A few examples may help. 

a.       One way to bring back memories of high school is to go back there.  Walk around, take your time, peek in classrooms where you once sat, go to the gym, the cafeteria, the track.  Bit by bit, ancient memories will reappear.  Don’t rush, and don’t be concerned with your current life.  Just focus on where you are.  Your memory will do the rest.  This is a typical example of relational recall.   What if the school is not there anymore, or you are far away?  Every time a school building is raised for a new one, millions of memories are lost.  Sad, but true.

b.      I grew up in the sixties, but so much of that time has faded I had but a few memories.  Maybe some were blocked, maybe some were gone. I have Sirius satellite radio, which just happens to have a sixties music channel.  Also, in the last many years I hadn’t much listened to that music.  So, I began listening to this essentially commercial free channel.  After some considerable time memories, the oddest of memories this time began returning.  I was reliving events, experiencing emotions of this long ago period of my life.

c.       Lately, I went back to the student center where I attended college.  Between the space, the presence, the sights and smells (cafeteria), I gained a blast of situational memories of my many, many happly hours spent in that building. 

d.      A friend brought over her grandmother’s cookbook, and reading through menus and recipes, she experienced a collection of forgotten memories. 

e.       In combination with the physical sense of touch and the mental sense of presence, I’ve often discovered old memories partly though daytime temperature.  On a particularly sunny but cool morning, when sitting outside usually reading with all at peace, I am bound to recollect some past similar situation and the related memories.  Ditto for a very hot day.  Note, one of these relational memory situations is associated with a pleasant sense of calm, the other with temperature related stress. 

f.       Everyone has their own relations to recall their memories.  What are yours?

Extra Notes.

• ·         The method may or may not work, but what is needed is an open and receptive mind for any hope of success.   Indeed, it is important to be receptive to memories.  They will come as they will.  Be prepared to receive them.
• ·         If you wish to try relational recall, it is best not best tried when you are preoccupied with something else, like you just had a big argument with your boss, you just got a speeding ticket, or something happened politically you didn’t like.  Doing so, under these and other stresses, could re-associate the trigger with newer memories. 
• ·         If you are, say a Beetles fan, and listen to Beetles music often, you have probably retrieved all possible long past memories, or as above, re-associated them.  The key is to discover the correct relation (or trigger) that hasn’t been used too often. 
• ·         There is a physiological way to trigger deep memories.  At least one report is on record of a man being treated for morbid obesity by a neurologist placing needles into the subject’s amygdala (very important for memory) experiencing vivid memories from previous decades.  This even has a name, Deep Brain Stimulation, or simply DBS.  Naturally, most of us can not take the time to carry about a neurologist with equipment in hand. 
• ·         While it is not a mental sense, the diary is an obviously memory stimulant.  It is not an account of times past as much as its author talking to his/her future self. 
• ·         In keeping with the “used-ideas” paradigm of our blog, it is very likely that much of this is known (I could find only what’s reported here), conjectured and rejected (I hope not), unknown in the main (I would be amazed).  Most of what is written here is intuitive, but perhaps an item or two does merit consideration in the collective or in THE relational recall. 

References:

Vanilla: http://www.sirc.org/publik/smell_vanilla.html
Sight: http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/bstj/vol40-1961/articles/bstj40-1-309.pdf
Hearing: http://www.psypost.org/2011/05/musicians-memory-hearing-speech-noise-5487