Memory: Between Neurons and Narratives

“There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligence's.” Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Memories underlie the core existence of our life, our ability to learn, understand, recognize people, and re-live the moments of past that shapes our present and future. It is fascinating and to some extent unsettling to imagine that all of our experiences hinges around the millions of cells around the flesh between our ears. It is an extensive topic of research in the field of neuroscience, which summarizes it as ‘The capacity to keep and develop acquired information and knowledge’ and put forwards several hypothetical yet exciting theories on the fundamentals of its functioning. 

Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash

However, I wish that neuroscience also tried to walk around the emotional complexities associated with memory, and the zigzag pattern of relationship it plays with the human mind.

So, how does the association between our emotions work in symmetry with our memories?

I will like to hypothesize memory as a never-ending graphic novel, which our mind picks and wanders through the visually striking images from our experiences. A graphic novel, which have certain colorful sections (memories which are positive in their nature, packed with hope), certain monochromatic one’s (memories that are sad in their nature). The template in either case remains the same; a previous event which has marked itself subconsciously in our mind, however it’s the emotional core surrounding the template which further classifies it into either colorful or monochromatic shades. It is like, the memories we adore, is represented visually in several bright colors, and the memories which are distressing, appear in black-white shades to provide different coating of emotions encapsulating that moment.

I wonder, how is editing of the graphic novel done? A certain “editor”, which plays a crucial role in developing a narrative of events to put on display into the graphic novel. It is certainly not the emotions; because they qualify into moments that are later on branded as memories, rather than quantifying it. The subconscious mind primarily edits the narrative of the memory. Memory is both resolute and delicate; sometimes we are able to beckon up the scenarios from events that occurred years back with perfectionism, and on few occasions, we are not able to remember events moments after their occurrence. The subconscious mind determines the memory that we want to recall, and later determines the importance the event carries with itself. 

Then, why would we store memories in monochromatic shades? A thought comes in my mind. It would be a great tool for human psychology that we remember only those events, which are colorful, visually aesthetic, positive, full of happiness, bringing a smile on our face, when we recall them. Life would be so better and calm, we will only wander around the nostalgia of brightness.

Perhaps its too fictionalized, but why not for just 10 minutes imagine that if we can recollect the brightest of our memories and spread them on the table like a set of paintings, and provide those memories with the unadulterated attention, and love, they deserve. Imagine, at the end of a long, tiring day, overcoming the irritating traffic on the roads, unnecessary gossips around your workplace, the judgmental stares from your neighbors, coming back to home, collapsing on the couch, closing our eyes, and taken into those glittery, vibrant moments, where even the tiniest of details around the backdrop can be easily recalled.   

If only we could maneuver our memory for a trait like this. 

Perhaps, the editor (our subconscious mind) does not want the graphic novel to shape up one-sided, and wants to keep up an unspecified ratio of shades so that our interest remains occupied, we are compelled to go back and turn few pages, and while looking for the colorful pages, come across the dull ones.  

As neuroscience progress, memory is bound to get explored with different perspectives on the origin, individual performances, functionalities associated with it, but that would be strictly in terms of coding of genes, expression of proteins, and the signaling of the neurons and our behavior patterns, without taking into consideration the plethora of emotions adjoining it. 

It is the storm of wide ranges of emotions, which appears internally in our mind, immersed into the space of our present existence, forming a ‘moment’, which ages into memory, and no research of neuroscience can explain what triggers those emotions, how they assemble with our present, how those moments age and what prompt the cells in our brain to revisit those memories.