Had a recent dialogue with someone who, like myself, was neither a doctor nor a scientist. But they had a very different opinion.

Laura felt that short term memory loss was just a question of importance and natural selection. She felt that your mind tended to discard trivia, but held onto facts that were important in your life. Such as, a movie you saw that was so impressive it's locked in your mind. For me, that would be Gregory Peck in 'To Kill A Mockingbird'.  Or events that were important. For instance: if you don't recall what you had for lunch yesterday, that's because it was uneventful. However, if you witnessed a bus crashing into a car from the front window of a restaurant, you would recall what you had for lunch and where it took place. Memories are associated with emotion. Makes sense to me. Elderly people can recall recent surgeries in full detail because that's an emotional experience for them.

She also believes memory loss has a lot to do with what is stored in your sub-conscious mind--that part of your brain that holds memories as opposed to your conscious mind. She stated that many times she's was ready to drift off into sleep and vivid memories from the past would come shooting into her mind because she was relaxed. Those memories were things she hadn't thought about in years. Now they were back, triggered by God only knows what, as clearly as though they had taken place that day.

Sometimes it's just facts that return. If you were impressed by the words of a certain author, or the works of a certain author, you would tend to recall passages from that author's novels. Or, in the case of a poet, phrases. "Oh what a twisted web we weave, when first we practice to deceive," by Sir Walter Scott. Laura believes memories go through a storage process of natural selection. As time goes by, we tend to find more important memories than those we've already stored. So the more important ones take precedence, whereas some of the older ones remain with us, but not as vividly. That is not to say we forget the trivial, but they take a while to remember. Such as a picture you saw, or a book you read, and you try to recall the central character's name. It will return eventually, but not as quickly as you'd like.

What's your opinion? I'd love to hear from you.

danar96.starband.net