Our brain weighs about 1.4kg and is roughly the size of a grape fruit, yet it consists of about 100billion neurones that form an incredible complex networks capable of taking in about 2million bytes of information per second. The information encoded is referred to as memory.
Memory enlarges our world. Without it we would lack a sense of continuity. Each day an event would exist in isolation; we could neither learn from the past nor anticipate the future.
Basically, the memory involves three stages; Encoding, Storage, and Retrieval. Our brain automatically encodes data on perception and registers/stores them for future retrieval. Thus, memory failure emanates when any of these three stages breaks down.
Why is it that birds can remember months later where they stored seeds for the winter, and Squirrels can remember the spot where they buried nuts, but we may forget where we left our keys just an hour ago?
In scrutiny, the obvious fact why one could watch a home video and be able to tell the story but reads his/her academic books and never remember anything once leaving the desk is as a result of inefficiency in any of the aforesaid memory stages.
Nonetheless, for one to nurture one's memory into acute excellence, taking cognisance of the following steps is imperative:
Stimulate your memory by learning new skills/things.
Focus on the most important things.
Learn mnemonic techniques.
Build a picture of the information since you capture what you picture.
Associate what you are learning with what you had already known.
Effective comprehension begets effective storage and retrieval.
Relax while studying and avoid being stressed out.
Eat right and Get enough sleep.
Drink enough water as dehydration can cause mental confusion.
Avoid smoking as it reduces oxygen to the brain.
Avoid alcohol abuse as it causes thiamine deficiency.
Engage in verbalization/visualization of the about to be stored data.
Of course you can train/improve your memory as studies had shown that our memory is like the muscle, the more we use it, the stronger it becomes.
