Memory

Are your brains warmed up and ready for some high-powered thinking? Our brains work 24/7. Unlike leg muscles, we can’t feel them working. We know they’re active because they carry out crucial tasks such as keeping us breathing, our hearts pumping, and our food digesting.

Brains do many things in the background. If we had to think about them, there’d be no room for anything else. When you learn something new, your brain makes space for it. The new learning goes into your memory.

You have a couple of different types of memory–working memory and long-term memory. Your working memory does a lot of hard work. It constantly gathers information from your senses. Working memory can only hold between 6 and 10 pieces of information at once.

If you reach your working memory limit, your brain starts shifting things around. It will throw out some things to bring your working memory back to where it’s comfortable.

Working memory goes into overdrive when you’re learning something new. It goes looking for memories that you already have.

If it can’t find any, it creates new ones by pushing the information into your long-term memory. Then it swaps stuff in and out, all the time keeping to your 6-10 piece limit.

Mike Cooper

Writer, educator. connect discover think learn

http://www.mikecooper.au
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