Think about
a time when you were given information such as a telephone number or address
that you would have to recall seconds or minutes later. What did you do in
order to remember that piece of information? Most likely, you tried rehearsing
the information over and over again until you needed to put it to use.
Typically, we find that this information disappears immediately after we stop
rehearsing it; however, a new study conducted by Dr. Chris Bird, published in
the Journal of Neuroscience, may
suggest that we are capable of creating permanent memories via rehearsal as
well.
Bird and
his research team had participants watch twenty-six short YouTube clips
featuring a narrative element. Following twenty of those videos, the
participants were given time to rehearse the information they just saw, either
out loud or in their heads. This rehearsal time was not given following the
other six videos. When the participants were brought back to the lab one to two
weeks later, the majority of them were able to recall a good amount of details
from the twenty videos that they were able to rehearse. However, the
participants could not remember much about the six videos that they had not
rehearsed. From this experiment, Bird found that amount of brain activity in
the posterior cingulate of individuals watching and rehearsing the videos
correlated to how likely the individuals were able to recall the details of the
videos later. Bird was then able to conclude that the posterior cingulate not
only aids in the recall of episodic memory, but also helps solidify long-term
memories.
In terms of
real world application, Bird suggests that these findings “have implications
for any situation where accurate recall of an event is critical, such as
witnessing an accident or crime.” However, I wonder how effective rehearsal would
actually be after a traumatic accident or crime, since it has been mentioned
previously in class that our memory is significantly impaired when we
experience a high arousal of fear. Is it possible that rehearsal techniques could
trump the effects of fear arousal and actually help us remember events that we
otherwise would not be able to recall?
Great post Brittany, very clear and interesting. Rehearsal and memory overall are very interesting, as a college student. I am sure many of us have had that moment 2-3 minutes before a test where we try to rehearse as many facts as we can. I am glad to see that we do, at least in part, retrain what we rehearse. If only our memory consolidation was so good that it only took 2-3 repetitions for it to stick in our long term...
ReplyDeleteYour question was also very interesting. By pure speculation alone, I would guess that amnesia would trump repetition, regarding a traumatic event. I am sure the last thing anyone would want to do would be rehearse the memory of what happened, in the case it was a bad situation. From here, it may be a battle against our own inner strength to retain the memory (i.e., suffer from recalling the memory, and retain it OR do not rehash the memory, do not suffer from emotional pain, but do not retain details about the experience). I am sure depending on the situation, we may or may not want to remember it. Losing memory from a traumatic experience may have been advantageous at some point in our history.
Lastly, I thought it would be interesting to test spacing vs. rehearsal. If you rehearse information many times for a long time, will you retain more information than if you space frequently (but not rehearse during the spacing event)? I hope that makes sense. If not, I can explain with another post. It seems like the key to memory is repetition in either case though. Sorry for the long-winded response! Great post!