My brain is always busy with stories these days. How are memories stored in our brains? Have you ever thought? The way neuroscience has traveled in studies of memory is extraordinary. But the transformation of memory into memory works on another level. Only some of the sensations that reach your brain during the day are kept in memory, these are filtered and a small part can be recorded. This recorded part can be recalled. While your brain is creating your memories, it cannot record the outside world as it is, but it perceives them with a integrity of many pieces of information and their coexistence at a certain time and forms its neuronal representation. Part of this representation is held in memory and recalled from memory to consciousness via the hippocampus.
The hippocampus is an important part of the brain involved in memory and orientation. All your memories are stored based on your location, time and "you", this is called "autobiographical memory". There is no autobiographical memory without the hippocampus.
Information from the outside world is first kept in short-term memory and the fate of this information is determined here: They will either be transferred to long-term memory or deleted from the record. Linguistic and cognitive features are also involved in the objects and representations in your mind. In order for the information in short-term memory to be transferred to long-term memory, it needs to be studied and repeated. The process of working on this is "making sense". In order for an information to pass from short-term memory to long-term memory, it must be interpreted. The interpretation is directly related to your past experiences, current attitude and expectations.
It doesn't have to be repeated for something to become your memory. Some moments leave marks as if they were stuck in your brain. This memorable moment also pops up before you in places you have never been. What we call the moment is not a straight movie scene, but a story that you personally experience and that has changed emotions and chemistry, and you tell it to yourself. The visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory or tactile information of the memories stored in the emotional part of the memory and the feelings, thoughts and meaning relations that they arouse in you are strongly established and preserved in the depths of the long-term memory. When you experience a similar feeling in the future, the moment that moment appears in your mind involuntarily is due to the fact that the records are sealed with emotions.
The concept of time is very important in the formation of memory and memories. If there is no time, there is no memory. While defining your own existence, it is not possible for you to be independent from your past, that is, time. Here is the autobiographical memory, the story you tell yourself, likes to get stuck in the past. Autobiographical memory has a unique feature: it is addicted to childhood moments and pain. This memory persistently stores and often reminds painful and humiliating memories. Various associations reveal what is on guard in autobiographical memory.
As you can see from what I have told so far, you do not record anything as it is and remember exactly the same. Every moment that you remember, that you recall from your recordings, is actually being reconstructed by your brain. Because your brain is constantly telling a story. Whatever "your" feelings, attitudes, beliefs, values, meanings at that moment are, the brain rewrites the story accordingly. So recall is not independent of interpretation. Each recollection is an act of re-storytelling.
As you remember the past or plan for the future in the here and now, you are actually constructing them. Even though the events you have narrated are the same, memories are made sense of these events. So even though the event is the same, the recalled memory is now something else. This is why two people storing the same event is different. A story that is remembered with the title of "being a victim" for some, can be interpreted as "survival" by another. Thus, the same event is a different story in different people. For this reason, the past can change, can be changed.
As a result, the person you are right now is directly related to the story your brain tells. What does the story your brain tells you say? Is this story about how unsuccessful, unlucky, incompetent, incompetent, unimportant you are, or is it anything else? Here, psychological counseling is a very effective method to reconsider, realize and reshape the story your brain tells. I end my article with the following quote. Stay with health and love.