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Memory is utilized in our day-to-day life. Whether you are at work using your short-term memory to recall someone’s name you just learned, or by using your long-term memory to remember how to drive home, although you learned 10 years ago. We use our memory as a tool to function everyday. In addition, we use our problem-solving skills just as often! Some days, you may use trial-and-error by trying different solutions over and over until you find the right one. This could look like trying to fit different puzzle pieces into one specific spot, until you finally find the one that fits. Our human behavior is molded by our ability to problem solve, think, and remember. Even if they are small, these behaviors make up our functionality as humans.

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Sensory Memory: a mental representation of how environmental events look, sound, feel, smell, and taste.

Short-term Memory: the memory systems in the brain involved in remembering pieces of information for a short period of time.

Long-term Memory: Memory that involves the storage and recall of information over a long period of time.

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Short-term Memory story-

While sitting in Ms. Mile’s third period class, I just remembered I need to text the mom I babysit for back. As soon as I respond to her, I will forget I even did this.

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Long-term Memory story-

I learned how to play goalie in soccer one day when I was young. The simple dynamics of the position are muscle memory for me now. Even if I go months without playing soccer, I still remember the procedures of my position. They come naturally.

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Long-term Memory story-

Since I have learned to drive, two years ago, it comes very naturally to me. I still remember everything I am supposed to do. Whether I haven’t driven in weeks or hours I still remember what procedures I must do.

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Using repetitive strategies, such as using flash cards to practice vocabulary, can help a person remember information better. Using different colors, titles, and subtitles can all help make this vocabulary more memorable.

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Writing information down that you want to remember can help make things more memorable. Common practices of this technique are, writing down notes in class, to-do lists, writing something down in a diary, etc.

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Strategy 1-
Trial and Error: this is one of the most common problem-solving strategies. The concept of this strategy is you try different solutions until you find one that works.

In real life, while I was helping my dad build something, I had no idea which wrench I should use. I searched his tool box, and repeatedly tried different wrenches until I finally found one that fit and worked. For this problem, the trail and error solution worked great. I was able to effectively find the right wrench. Any other strategy might have been more trouble than it would have been worth.

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Strategy 2-
Heuristics: this strategy is a framework people use to quickly find a solution. This solution may not be the optimal solution, but it is faster than finding a perfect one. Algorithms or equations are examples of this.

Real life example: Earlier this week, I noticed the clouds were getting dark. So, on my way to my soccer game, I grabbed an umbrella. This provided me with a quick solution if it were to rain. If I had used the trail and error approach, I would have had to get wet to learn my lesson. Instead, I thought ahead.

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Cognitive Bias- this helps humans find mental shortcuts to assist in navigation of daily life. However, this can also cause irrational interpretations or judgements.

Real Life Example:
Some may attribute other people’s successes to luck. So, they decide to continue being lazy. Even though, if they didn’t have cognitive bias, they would be equally as successful.

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Limited Perspective- this is when a person solely focuses on their own point of view, and fails to consider other potential solutions.

Real life example: When two people are in a fight. If one person has limited perspective, the problem may not get solved. This is because, one person is only focusing on their point of view, and are failing to understand the other side of the story.

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Landmark study shows that 'transcendent' thinking may grow teens' brains over time

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Transcendental Thinking: a study shows that adolescents who are involved with bigger meaning of social situations experience greater brain growth. This type of thinking, called transcendent moves beyond simply reacting to specifics of social situations and thinking about ethical, broad implications.

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Scientists at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education's Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education (CANDLE), have shown for the first time that a type of thinking, that has been described for over a century as a developmental milestone of adolescence, may grow teenagers' brains over time. This kind of thinking, which the study's authors call "transcendent," moves beyond reacting to the concrete specifics of social situations to also consider the broader ethical, systems-level and personal implications at play. Engaging in this type of thinking involves analyzing situations for their deeper meaning, historical contexts, civic significance, and/or underlying ideas.

The research team, led by USC Rossier Professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, includes Rebecca J.M. Gotlieb, research scientist at UCLA, and Xiao-Fei Yang, assistant research professor at USC Rossier. The published study "Diverse adolescents' transcendent thinking predicts young adult psychosocial outcomes via brain network development" is published in Nature Scientific Reports.

In previous studies, the authors had shown that when teens and adults think about issues and situations in a transcendent way, many brain systems coordinate their activity, among them two major networks important for psychological functioning: the executive control network and the default mode network. The executive control network is involved in managing focused and goal-directed thinking, while the default mode network is active during all kinds of thinking that transcends the "here and now," such as when recalling personal experiences, imagining the future, feeling enduring emotions such as compassion, gratitude and admiration for virtue, daydreaming or thinking creatively.

The researchers privately interviewed 65, 14-18-year-old high school students about true stories of other teens from around the world and asked the students to explain how each story made them feel. The students then underwent fMRI brain scans that day and again two years later. The researchers followed up with the participants twice more over the next three years, as they moved into their early twenties.

What the researchers found is that all teens in the experiment talked at least some about the bigger picture-what lessons they took from a particularly poignant story, or how a story may have changed their perspective on something in their own life or the lives and futures of others. However, they found that while all of the participating teens could think transcendently, some did it far more than others. And that was what made the difference. The more a teen grappled with the bigger picture and tried to learn from the stories, the more that teen increased the coordination between brain networks over the next two years, regardless of their IQ or their socioeconomic status. This brain growth-not how a teen's brain compared to other teens' brains but how a teen's brain compared to their own brain two years earlier-in turn predicted important developmental milestones, like identity development in the late teen years and life satisfaction in young adulthood, about five years later.

The findings reveal a novel predictor of brain development-transcendent thinking. The researchers believe transcendent thinking may grow the brain because it requires coordinating brain networks involved in effortful, focused thinking, like the executive control network, with those involved in internal reflection and free-form thinking, like the default mode network. These findings "have important implications for the design of middle and high schools, and potentially also for adolescent mental health," lead researcher Immordino-Yang says. The findings suggest "the importance of attending to adolescents' needs to engage with complex perspectives and emotions on the social and personal relevance of issues, such as through civically minded educational approaches,'' Immordino-Yang explains. Overall, Immordino-Yang underscores "the important role teens play in their own brain development through the meaning they make of the social world."

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Landmark study shows that 'transcendent' thinking may grow teens' brains over time

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CANDLE scientists find that adolescents who grapple with the bigger meaning of social situations experience greater brain growth, which predicts stronger identity development and life satisfaction years later.

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Neuroscientists successfully test theory that forgetting is actually a form of learning

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Forgetting is a form of learning- Neuroscientists report a new theory that “forgetting” an idea may not be a bad thing, it may actually represent a form of learning.

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Neuroscientists today report the first results from experimental tests designed to explore the idea that "forgetting" might not be a bad thing, and that it may represent a form of learning -- and outline results that support their core idea.

Last year the neuroscientists behind the new theory suggested that changes in our ability to access specific memories are based on environmental feedback and predictability. And that rather than being a bug, forgetting may be a functional feature of the brain, allowing it to interact dynamically with a dynamic environment.

In a changing world like the one we and many other organisms live in, forgetting some memories would be beneficial, they reasoned, as this can lead to more flexible behaviour and better decision-making. If memories were gained in circumstances that are not wholly relevant to the current environment, forgetting them could be a positive change that improves our wellbeing.

Today, in the journal Cell Reports, they present the first in a series of new experimental studies where the effect of natural, "every day" forgetting was investigated with respect to how normal forgetting processes affect particular memories in the brain.

The team studied a form of forgetting called retroactive interference, where different experiences occurring closely in time can cause the forgetting of recently formed memories. In their study, mice were asked to associate a specific object with a particular context or room, and then recognise that an object that was displaced from its original context. However, mice forget these associations when competing experiences are allowed to 'interfere' with the first memory.

To study the result of this form of forgetting on memory itself, the neuroscientists genetically labelled a contextual "engram" (a group of brain cells that store a specific memory) in the brains of these mice, and followed the activation and functioning of these cells after forgetting had happened. Crucially, using a technique called optogenetics they found that stimulation of the engram cells with light retrieved the apparently lost memories in more than one behavioural situation. Furthermore, when the mice were given new experiences that related to the forgotten memories, the 'lost' engrams could be naturally rejuvenated.

Dr Tomás Ryan, Associate Professor in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology and the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin, is lead author of the just-published journal article.

Dr Ryan,whose research team is based in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute (TBSI), said:

"Memories are stored in ensembles of neurons called 'engram cells' and successful recall of these memories involves the reactivation of these ensembles. By logical extension, forgetting occurs when engram cells cannot be reactivated. However, it is increasingly becoming clear that the memories themselves are still there, but the specific ensembles are not activated and so the memory is not recalled. It's as if the memories are stored in a safe but you can't remember the code to unlock it."

Dr Livia Autore, Irish Research Council (IRC) Postgraduate Scholar, who spearheaded this work in the Ryan Lab in Trinity, added:

"Ourfindings here support the idea that competition between engrams affects recall and that the forgotten memory trace can be reactivated by both natural and artificial cues as well as updated with new information. The continuous flow of environmental changes leads to the encoding of multiple engrams that compete for their consolidation and expression.

"So while some may persist undisturbed, some will be subjected to interference by new incoming and prevailing information. However, the interfered memories can still be reactivated by surrounding cues leading to memoryexpression or by misleading or novel experiences ending up in an updated behavioural outcome."

Because we now know that "natural forgetting" is reversible in certain circumstances, this work has significant implications for disease states -- such as in people living with Alzheimer's disease for example, where these every day forgetting processes may be mistakenly activated by brain disease.

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brain tumor; alzheimer's research; nervous system; immune system; memory; intelligence; brain injury; educational psychology

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Neuroscientists successfully test theory that forgetting is actually a form of learning

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Neuroscientists report the first results from experimental tests designed to explore the idea that 'forgetting' might not be a bad thing, and that it may represent a form of learning -- and outline results that support their core idea.