Essay Example on the Complex Function of Memory: How it Shapes Us and Our Interactions

Memory is a function of the brain, which is very complex to retrieve information. The life experience memories are what defines a human being; it makes them who they are. This function of the brain helps the human body to interact with the environment; it also provokes the body towards reacting to situations and also giving responses. Memory is described as how the brain can rely on past experiences and use that information at present, according to Sternberg (Sternberg 133). The memory is significant to the lives of individuals as it acquires, stores, and retrieves information; those are the main three processes of a person's mind.

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Memory has a way of functioning, how it acquires information, stores, and retrieves it. The information is conveyed to the nervous system by the Neurons, which are the primary means. The sensory neuron detects the info that is in the form of stimuli (Berridge 281). The information that has been detected is then passed over to an interconnecting neuron known as adjacent neurons before it is sent to the brain (Berridge 281). The electrochemical process enables all those processes. There is the third type of Neurons that act as a connecting factor and activator of the muscle tissue, referred to as motor neurons.

There are types of information stored in the memory, which are divided by a neurologist into the short term memory, which is termed as the working memory, the long term memory, and the sensory storage (Berridge 281). The short term memory facilitates the remembrance of the in-use information, which are only between five to nine things at a specific period in humans if it passes that they forget the information in the middle. In this stage, rehearsal of info ca be done, and after several times it gets conveyed to long term memory. In the long term memory, the information I stored in various places in the nervous system. Every thought a person has is felt because it is stored in the whole body. In the sensory storage is where the stimulus happens there and then, and it dissapears.

There are several types of memory condition which can either be modest or serious. The disorders are caused by neurological damage in the brain structures which tampers with the recollecting, retaining and storing of memories (Berridge 281). They can also be immediate or even progressive, mostly due to injuries in the head. Still, most of them are due to the aging factor, which is the "general single greatest risk factor' of the neurodegenerative illnesses.

There are several memory disorders such as Agnosia where the brain can interpret any sensation due to its damage, inability to recognize, faces, voices, places, and objects, and affect one part of the brain. The primary memory diseases are Huntington's disease, multiple sclerosis, limbic encephalitis, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, and the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The disorders are the inability to remember, reason, communicate or even make decisions, mostly this disorders are caused by substance abuse like alcoholism, trauma, aging, the is also the hereditary memory disorders like the Huntington's and Alzheimer's diseases, brain tumors, narrowing of blood arteries, deficiency of vitamins in the body and metabolic diseases which are not treated (Berridge 281). Some can instantly happen while others may take longer in the body before the symptoms show; some can be entirely reversed, and others can be slowed.

Works Cited

Cauffman, Elizabeth, Laurence Steinberg, and Alex R. Piquero. "Psychological, neuropsychological and physiological correlates of serious antisocial behavior in adolescence: The role of selfcontrol." Criminology 43.1 (2005): 133-176.

Berridge, M. J. (2014). Calcium regulation of neural rhythms, memory, and Alzheimer's disease. The Journal of Physiology, 592(2), 281-293.