It is a remarkable fact that the brain, made of neurons and their connections to one another named synapses, is able to remember.
After all, if there is one thing we can say about our bodies and about nature, it's that change is everywhere. To remember is to go the other way, as we somehow try to defy the passage of time and its dispersive effects, even if imperfectly. We go back to some kind of archive in our heads where we can retrieve information. Short-term memories are ephemeral, while long-term memories may fade and change, and sometimes they disappear altogether. But some persist for a lifetime, even if sometimes only at the level of uncertain contours. How does the brain do that?
The research field of how we remember has a vast history. (The interested reader can check the book by Kurt Danziger, a well-known historian of psychology.) It is intuitive that if memories are somehow encoded in the brain, the mechanism must involve neurons and their synapses. When a memory is retrieved, such pathways connecting neurons are reactivated and brought back to consciousness: A certain group of neurons and specific pathways between them fires and we remember.
[For more of this story, written by Marcelo Gleiser, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/13...culpting-of-memories]
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