Memory is the mother of all wisdom

[Mikhail Thatcher]

Quote is by Aeschylus
Ashley Andrew Stephens
Anna Jones
Athena Achilles
Caitriona Maldonado
Cara-Jean Kitchi
Gavriila Shahar
Martijn van der Berg
Nevaeh Lincoln
Serenity Oliver

Mikhail Thatcher walked into his classroom and released a long breath. This would be his first time as a teacher and he didn’t even have Belle there to take support from – not that he would have had the canine in his classroom, the feeling would have been there.

He set up his laptop, ready to load up the power point when it was needed, but for now put it into sleep mode. He sat down behind the desk and greeted the students as the entered.

Once the bell had sounded to begin the lesson, he rose to his feet and did just that. “Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I’m Mr Thatcher, and you’re here to learn about psychology.” He looked over the students, wondering if they wanted to know why he was teaching this subject, but decided against it and went straight into the lesson. “For the next could of weeks we’re going to look into how the memory works. Until recently, memory has been compared to a computer and defined by an information-processing model in which information goes through three discrete stages: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Additionally, Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) posited that information goes through three stages: sensory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Today, researchers have integrated this model with findings from cognitive neuroscience to include the idea that memory has been found to be created by a collection of systems, working interdependently. There is no one portion of the brain solely responsible for all memory, though there are certain regions related to specific memory subsystems.

“The multiple systems model posits that memory is not a single, unitary system that relies on one neuroanatomical circuit; rather memory is made up of multiple memory systems that can work independently of one another. The systems include declarative memory and nondeclarative memory. Each of these has several subsystems.

II. Declarative memory
A. Declarative memory or explicit memory is a memory system that is controlled consciously, intentionally, and flexibly. Declarative memory generally involves some effort and intention, and we can employ memory strategies such as mnemonics to recall information.

1. It is mediated by the hippocampus and frontal lobes, and, thus, damage to these areas may compromise declarative memory. For example, people with damage to the hippocampus have difficulty forming new long-term declarative memories, while those with frontal lobe damage may experience deficits in working memory.
2. Explicit memory is measured with explicit memory tests, such as recall and recognition, in which an individual is fully aware that he or she is being tested.
3. It generally declines with age.

B. Examples include recalling the name of an old friend, remembering a list of items to pick up at the store, remembering information for a test, learning a phone number, and recalling your ATM password.

III. Declarative memory subsystems
A. Working memory is a short-term memory system that allows us to store and process limited amounts of information of an immediate sense. Working memory lasts anywhere from 2 to 18 seconds. Working memory is used for mental calculations, such as figuring a tip; retaining information briefly, such as when dialling a phone number; and processing incoming information, such as when listening to a newscast. It also allows us to temporarily process information we have previously learned in a class and access it to learn and associate new information.
B. Episodic memory is a long-term memory system that stores information about specific events or episodes related to one’s own life.
1. Episodic memory is used to recall past events, such as a movie you saw last week, the dinner you ate last night, the name of the book your friend recommended, or a birthday party you attended.
2. In the laboratory, psychologists study episodic memory by exposing participants to material and then testing the participants’ memory of it. For example, in the first part of an experiment, participants could be shown pictures of 20 simple objects and then asked to name the pictures (e.g., dog, table, shoe). After a delay, for part two of the experiment, participants could be asked to recall all the pictures they had seen in the first part of the experiment, or they could be tested on their recognition of the items they had seen. For example, participants can be presented with 20 pictures (10 old pictures and 10 new pictures) and asked to circle the objects they had seen in the first part of the experiment. Note that both the recall and recognition tests ask participants to consciously remember what had been presented earlier.
C. Semantic memory is a long-term memory system that stores general knowledge. Examples of what semantic memory stores are vocabulary or facts such as 2+2 = 4 and Michigan is a state in the United States.

IV. Nondeclarative memory
A. Nondeclarative memory or implicit memory is a memory system that influences our current perceptions and behavior without our knowledge, awareness, or intention. Nondeclarative memory is not used intentionally and involves no effort. It is assessed with an implicit memory test in which the individual is unaware she or he is taking a memory test.

1. It is mediated by cortical areas, the cerebellum, and the basal ganglia. Just as damage to the hippocampus and frontal lobes can compromise performance on declarative memory tasks, so, too, can damage to the visual cortical area impair visual priming. Damage to the cerebellum and basal ganglia can impair classical conditioning and procedural memory.
2. It was first discovered in work with people who had anterograde amnesia (an inability to form new, long-term declarative memories) and seemingly could not form new memories.
3. It is assessed with implicit measures such as priming, in which participants do not know their memory is being tested. Generally, these measures test for the effects of prior exposure on behavior without asking for conscious recollection. a. For example, the first part of an experiment could be identical to the episodic memory experiment described above. That is, you could show participants pictures of 20 simple objects and have the participants label the pictures (e.g., dog, table, shoe). After a delay, for part two of the experiment, you could tell participants they will now perform a speeded naming task in which their task is to name pictures as quickly as possible. You could then present a number of new pictures (e.g., one of a cat) and a number of old pictures (e.g., one of a dog) and measure participants’ speed in naming the pictures. You will find effects of repetition priming, that is, old items will be named more quickly than new items.
b. Another way to say this is that the prior exposure and naming of pictures enhances (in this case, speeds up) later processing of those items. Note that you are not asking participants to remember the pictures that occurred in the first part of the experiment—that kind of test would be a declarative or explicit memory test.
4. Nondeclarative memory is used synonymously with implicit memory.
5. It remains relatively stable with normal aging.
6. Examples of nondeclarative memory include riding a bike, driving a stick-shift car, using the same verbal patterns as friends (e.g., saying “like” repeatedly), and classical conditioning.” He paused in his lecture and a smile tugged at his lips. “Now, before I bore the lot of you to sleep, I’d like you, with the knowledge I’ve just given you, to please write down everything you did yesterday that did not involve your memory.”

Giving the students a chance to think and write down, he walked over to the desk and took a marker from the top drawer and walked up to the white board. “Ok, fire them at me.” He said with a grin, he knew that he was possible asking to be given a million things to write down at once, but he didn’t care, the class wasn’t that big.

[Cara-Jean Kitchi]

Cara kept her head down as she worked against the tide of students moving through the hallways and paused at the door to the classroom and drew in a calming breath before she entered the room. Bowing her head toward the teacher, she crossed the room and sat down at the table in the far corner and then began to set her table up.

She opened her binder as the man walked to the front of the room, picking up the black pen, she dated the top of the page and then swapped black for blue and waited. When he began speaking she wrote Memory at the top of the page and then began to make notes of what he was saying.

She pressed the pen against her lips as she went through the things she had done the day before and tried to sort out what she had done that required memory and what hadn't. She wrote down a title and then began to list things she was sure the body did that she was sure wasn't a learned process: Breathing, sleeping, hearing, waking - all things that were done in utero.

Her eyebrows lifted when it became apparent that the man wanted them to call the answers out, though she remained silent. She did however swap pens as she would add things to her list that others call out.

[Athena Achilles]

Athena shouldered her backpack as the class she was in was finishing and she made her way through the students who had stopped for a chat as she made her way out of the hall and down to her next class. She often questioned why she was doing psychology and then remembered that it was because she was hoping that it would help when she went to law school.

She smiled toward the teacher as she walked into the room and made her way over to a table in the middle of the room, before pulling out her notebook. She was a little surprised to find nothing on the board or any handouts, but she guessed that everything would be revealed when the teacher began the class.

She listened attentively as the class started, making notes about the off thing he said that sounded like it could come up again later, though she preferred to be doing something rather than just sitting there listening. She smiled when Mr Thatcher seemed to have run out of steam and gave them a task to do.

She tapped her pen on her paper as she wondered what she had done the day before that hand't required the use of her memory. Didn't everything they did require some form of memory? With a shrug, she jotted down; walking, speaking and put a question mark beside both. She shrugged again when Mr Thatcher wanted them to call things out. "Eating?" She said, though the word sound like the question it was.

[Ashley Andrew Stephens]

Drew was actually looking forward to Psychology. The human brain was a fascinating big of machinery. Even the best computers couldn't hold a candle to everything the human brain was capable of. Computers were inherently stupid. They did nothing by themselves. A user, someone with a brain, had to provide input first. And in the end, all a computer understood were two settings--on and off. Neurons were so much more complex. He sat down near the front and pulled out his notebook opened to the first page. For once, he didn't immediately start sketching. He took notes throughout the lecture using arrows and other visual aids to help him remember it all later. Memory was a fascinating subject in general. Sure, he didn't remember everything, and he wasn't always conscious of things in his body that happened. Muscle memory was really just repetition of an action in order to strengthen the signal from the firing synapses. His brain turned sensory input from his eyes and ears into memories. He was a bit curious if subconscious behaviors such as breathing, blinking, and the regular pumps from his heart were done through memory or not.

He wrote down several things he knew didn't involve the brain at all. Those couldn't have anything to do with memory. A couple points received question marks when he wasn't sure. Confident in a few of his answers, Drew spoke up. "My mitochondria produced ATP, ribosomes made proteins from RNA, DNA replicated itself, the lysosomes broke down waste material and cellular debris, and molecules passed through cell membranes either passively or actively." Okay, so maybe that wasn't the response the professor was expecting. But, there was no way memory could be involved. Not only did Drew have no memory of carrying out those actions, there was no way for him to control it. Cancerous cells could replicate themselves entirely separate from a brain. And it really wasn't like the brain could be sending signals to every single cell in his body saying 'Hey, lysosomes, remember to break down waste proteins today!'

[Serenity Oliver]

There was a chance that Serenity was just a little too much of a morning person as she floated from one classroom to the next, stopping to chat with a few people, and then bounced into the classroom where their psychology class was held. While she was more interested in animal psychology, she knew that with being a healer, she needed to know how the human brain worked to; which led her to this class.

"Hi!" She chirped as she walked in and sat down at a table near the front of the room. She took out the folder she had for the class and picked up a pen before looking at the board and raised an eyebrow to see there was nothing on it, yet she waited for the class to start. As soon as Mr Thatcher started speaking, she was hooked as she was interested to know how the memory worked. Why was it that she could remember the names of all her herbs and forget a simple equation in maths class?

When they were given their first task she frowned in thought and then wondered if facial expressions were done without the memory? Blowing out a breath she quickly wrote down: blinking, seeing, breathing, sleeping, waking up all of those were done since birth, or before, so they were natural, not learned.

[Caitriona Maldonado]

Yeah, I run this show

I'm the boss right now
Not gonna fake it
Not when you go down
'Cause this is my game
And you better come to play

WORDS:223	OUTFIT:	TAG:
NOTES:

Caitriona was one of the first ones out of the English classroom. It had not been fun working in mostly silence, even if she had been writing, and she had been counting down the minutes until the class was over. She walked to her next class.

Caitriona entered the classroom, not bothering to greet her teacher or look to see if she noticed any people like her roommate, Erik, or Ingrid. She took a seat and took out her notebook and pen. By the time the lecture was halfway through, Caitriona felt like her brain had turned to mush. She wrote down everything the teacher said, but almost none of it made sense and she was beginning to wonder why she had signed up for psychology. Oh right, because she thought it'd be an easy class. Not! Her pen scribbled furiously as she wrote in English, though she abbreviated some words in Spanish. Her hand was starting to cramp from writing so fast, but she ignored it. Caitriona couldn't afford to not write something down, and then end up getting a bad grade on a quiz or test because she hadn't wrote it down. "Sleeping." She stated, not entirely sure if it would be considered an action or not, but not really caring if it was or wasn't.

Temp by Melz @Caution 2.0, cyberlink, adoxography and RPGD

[Martijn van der Berg]

Martijn walked into the psychology classroom, backpack slung over one shoulder, hair just slightly disheveled thanks to the rain outside. He could see Cara sitting in her usual seat and walked over to the desk next to her, setting down his bag after shooting a smile in her direction, “Morning.” He sat down himself and then reached down to pull out his notebook for the class, flipping it open to a new page and then pulling out a pencil and laying it across the top.

Once the new teacher had started the class, Tijn noted down his name and then headed the page with the topic, 'Memory'. Of course, that was a major part of psychology, so it couldn't really surprise him. As it seemed that this would be a major lecture period, Tijn contained his disappointment and settled down to take notes, writing furiously in places to try and keep up. Not every class period could be exciting, and he knew that. But still, notes were among his least favorite parts of any class, even if they were a necessary evil.

As Mr. Thatcher paused in his lecture, Tijn looked up, blinking as he replayed the last few sentences in the lecture and realizing that they'd been asked a question. He jotted down a couple of ideas, and once bidden, called out, “Sleeping!” He didn't need to remember how to sleep, it was like shutting down all activities.

[Anna Jones]

Anna grinned as she walked down the hallway to the psychology classroom. This was definitely one of her favorite classes, as she took it at her old middle school in Connecticut, and she was looking forward to seeing what it would be like at Blue Ridge. Anna strolled into the classroom and searched the room for anybody that she knew. She didn't know anybody, so she just sat at one of the tables towards the back of the classroom. As she listened to the teacher's lecture, she had to occupy herself by switching out pens and randomly beginning to write an essay. The whole time she couldn't help but think how Sunstruck was settling into his new home.

Anna truly disliked lectures. She was not a verbal learner, therefore they generally did not help her in the class. Also, they were incredibly boring and difficult to listen to. Anna continued to grin, however, and pretend that she was listening. When the teacher asked for ideas, her hand instantly shot up. However, almost as soon as it shot up it was down again, and Anna knew that she would probably lose participation points for that. After reprimanding herself repeatedly for that, she decided to just use other's ideas and at least learn something from this lesson.