Many psychologists agree that dreaming is intimately connected to the faculty of memory, but what is less clear is how. Different theories have been put forward to attempt to explain the relationship and why we find it so difficult to remember our dreams. Most dreams occur during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the stage of […]

Not all memories can be accessed at will. According to Freudian theory, some that are too disturbing to contemplate can be repressed so that they are inaccessible to the conscious mind. But whether memories ‘recovered’ in therapy are reliable is a matter of debate. The notion of an unconscious mind full of repressed memories and

Amnesia can be experienced as anything from a temporary absence of memory to an enduring loss causing severe disruption in a person’s life. However, even in prolonged amnesia, the brain is sometimes able to find new ways of remembering information. Amnesia is defined as the temporary or permanent impairment of some part of the memory

All of us suffer from a particular kind of forgetting called childhood amnesia. However impressive our memory might be, our ability to remember events from the first three or four years of our lives is extremely poor – no matter how many fascinating things occurred. The paradox of childhood amnesia is that young children themselves

We often talk about remembering as if it is a simple matter of managing to remember or not. But there are a number of different ways to access memories, and the method we use depends on the type of situation. What is the capital city of Canada? In which year did the Berlin Wall come

Memory might be regarded as one of the oldest arts. In ancient times, memory was the sole medium by which all history and knowledge could be recorded. The development of good memory skills was not only essential but was also a topic of endless fascination. The word ‘ mnemonic means pertaining to memory or memory

Some things seem to stick in our memories of their own accord. But most information, even material we really would like to retain, seems to slip away. By thinking about what we do remember, we can learn how to remember the things we usually forget. What makes certain facts or events stay in memory? Why,

Everything that happens to you as a context – not just circumstances and surroundings but also your internal state, emotions, and physical feelings as you experience it. If the event is laid down as a memory, some of that context is laid down with it and becomes a hook for remembering. Imagine you are happily

Every night, we shut our eyes, let the mind slip its moorings, and enter the blank Iimbo of sleep. While it is tempting to treat sleep simply as a state of unconsciousness, psychologists tell a very different story in which sleep is really not as far from waking as it first appears. Being asleep seems

There is no single ‘normal’ state of consciousness. Every person experiences a huge range of mental conditions every day as the brain adapts to changing circumstances. The dividing line between conscious and unconscious care is not sharp. Even within consciousness, there are different degrees. ln dreamless sleep, you may not be conscious of anything at