Lassoing Memories

Memory is amazing; it’s the treasure house of our lives. As persons, we refer to memory not by neural processes, but experientially, through images and words. When we remember, it’s as if we lasso memories straight from the darkness and into the mind. As a physical process, “memory” refers to the activities in the brain which trace, store and retrieve information. Discovered some time ago, memory possesses this really interesting property sometimes referred to as the Three W’s, for “When”, “What”, and “Where”. Suppose I asked you, “where did you last go on holiday?”. And suppose you said, “Italy”. And just like a daisy chain, when one of the three W’s is triggered, the other two are automatically brought into the awareness of the mind, and the neural traces are subjectively experienced as a mental image or linguistic symbol.

So in addition to the spatial context of the place where your memory occurred, you’ll also recall the substantial context of the memory––what you did on your holiday––and also the temporal context––when you went on your holiday. There’s various complex interrelations at play given we remember whatever it is we’re paying attention to at any given time; for instance if it was a special period when you went on holiday, if it was a special place, or if you did something special. But the daisy chain of memory runs together. “What”, “When”, and “Where” go in tandem because it’s an extremely helpful and efficient way to pull information from the mind.