by Maya Vokes-Didier

Created on: May 23, 2009

Do you often find yourself forgetting the name of a movie you have seen a dozen times? Are you the type of person who never forgets a face but draws a blacnk when it comes to remembering your own telephone number? Once in a while, all of us are prone to embarrassing bouts of forgetfulness, but this usually has nothing to do with a serious memory problem. Although it is true that some people are better at remembering even minute details, most of us just get by with half-remembered facts most of the time.

Needless to say, the ability to remember those bits of information, that we require in order to accomplish certain tasks, is essential to everyday living. This is short-term memory, where we store facts for just as long as we need to remember them. Our long-term memory is where such things as the names of our school-friends or the nursery rhymes that we haven't heard in years are stored. Quite often, some of what we lock away at the back of our minds probably gets lost. It may lurk somewhere in the recesses of our brains, but it has become so insignificant to us that we may have unconsciously blocked it out of our minds.

Where do thoughts go?

We all know that some parts of the brain are responsible for our body control, speech, hearing and sight, but scientists have learnt little about where our memory centers are actually located. Nor does anyone know which mental buttons we are meant to push in order to access certain information in our memory.

Everything our brain has absorbed since we first began to learn and observe the world is quite diverse. We all have a lifetime of mundane memories - our common everyday happenings. Where do all these memories go? What happens to all this accumulated trivia?

Some researchers believe that our memory fades with time, while others are of the view that interference plays a vital role; that we forget routine events because subsequent similar ones have obscured any single occurrence. Most of the scientific evidence on this subject points to the conclusion that memory-interference of some sort has more to do with forgetting than the deterioration caused by time.

Remedies for Memory-Loss

Certain chemicals are known to improve memory. For example, when you are under the influence of sodium pentathol, your state of mind is so altered that you become receptive to cues that trigger buried memories. This acts in much the same way as a certain smell brings back memories from the past for many of us. Stimulants like amphetamines

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