Quotes About Memory

We no longer have death in our culture: the dead become abstractions, statistics, companies will take charge of the relationship that we can have to our own dead. In 2, 3 days the cremation is done, we can forget, the question is settled and the dead is only a memory. This is problematic, because we risk falling first into what Freud calls melancholy, that is to say the impossibility of mourning because we no longer have an object to mourn.

Of course, a blow job given in friendship isn't the most arousing, but it stays in the memory longer.

Music', said Arkady, 'is a memory bank for finding one's way about the world.

In my grandmother's dining-room there was a glass-fronted cabinet and in the cabinet a piece of skin.

Proust, more perspicaciously than any other writer, reminds us that the 'walks' of childhood form the raw material of our intelligence.

I woke up one morning with this song in my head, and the opening line of the song is, 'My name was Richard Nixon, only now I'm a girl.'

Travel safe, travel well. May those who have gone before be always with you.

The core lessons these children have taught me are relevant for us all. Because in order to understand trauma we need to understand memory. In order to appreciate how children heal we need to understand how they learn to love, how they cope with challenge, how stress affects them. And by recognizing the destructive impact that violence and threat can have on the capacity to love and work, we can come to better understand ourselves and to nurture the people in our lives, especially the children.

memory is what the brain does, how it composes us and allows our past to help determine our future. In no small part memory makes us who we are

As you learn anything, in fact, your brain is constantly checking current experience against stored templates—essentially memory—of previous, similar situations and sensations, asking "Is this new?" and "Is this something I need to attend to?

Our conscious memory is full of gaps, of course, which is actually a good thing. Our brains filter out the ordinary and expected, which is utterly necessary to allow us to function. When you drive, for example, you rely automatically on your previous experiences with cars and roads; if you had to focus on every aspect of what your senses are taking in, you'd be overwhelmed and would probably crash.

Because in order to understand trauma we need to understand memory. In order to appreciate how children heal we need to understand how they learn to love, how they cope with challenge, how stress affects them. And by recognizing the destructive impact that violence and threat can have on the capacity to love and work, we can come to better understand ourselves and to nurture the people in our lives, especially the children.

our brain uses a couple of key strategies to help us make sense of the world. First, it makes associations between patterns of sensory input that co-occur, creating "memories" from our experiences. Second, it uses these stored memories to categorize and interpret new experience. And if new input is similar enough to previous experience, it will categorize the new experience as similar or equal to the past experience.

To create an effective "memory" and increase strength, experience has to be patterned and repetitive.

We ignore familiar patterns in ordinary contexts, so much so that we forget large portions of our days, which are spent doing routine things like brushing our teeth or getting dressed.

In Sandy's case, milk, once associated with nurturing and nutrition, now became the stuff that spilled from her throat, that her mother "refused" as she lay dead. Silverware was now no longer something used to eat your food, but rather something that killed and maimed and horrified. And doorbells—well, that was what had started the whole thing: the ringing of the doorbell had announced the arrival of the killer.

Neural systems have evolved to be especially sensitive to novelty, since new experiences usually signal either danger or opportunity. One of the most important characteristics of both memory, neural tissue, and of development, then, is that they all change with patterned, repetitive activity. So, the systems in your brain that get repeatedly activated will change, and the systems in your brain that don't get activated won't change.

Creamos recuerdos, pero los recuerdos también nos crean a nosotros, y se trata de un proceso dinámico en constante cambio que está sujeto a sesgos e influencias de diversas fuentes ajenas al acontecimiento actual que tenemos "almacenado". Lo que experimentamos primero filtra lo que vendrá después.

evocative cues"—basically any sensory input, like a sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch—can activate a traumatic memory.

No one knows what a moderate dose of revisiting a trauma memory is better than the actual traumatized person.

Memory is the capacity to carry forward in time some element of an experience.

the more anxious someone is the harder it is for him to accurately recall and describe his feelings, thoughts and history.

emotional memories: A song can elicit a feeling, an association with an experience that took place years ago. The smell of roasted turkey or freshly baked bread may elicit a warm sense of belonging, or a melancholy sense of a lost past.

para la evaluación clínica resulta fundamental saber que, cuanta más ansiedad siente una persona, más difícil le resulta recordar y describir sus sentimientos, pensamientos e historia con exactitud.