"the pain of physical events may fade with time, while the pain of social occurrences can be re-instantiated through memory retrievals."

The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer's hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man's curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don't remember how you learned it.

This wiki is a collaborative environment for exploring ways to become a better thinker. Topics that can be explored here include MemoryTechniques, MentalMath, CriticalThinking, BrainStorming, ShorthandSystems, NotebookSystems, and SmartDrugs. Other relevant topics are also welcome. How have you made yourself smarter ?

We believe that memory provides us with a faithful record of past events. But in fact, it is well established that memory is reconstructive, and not reproductive, in nature. In retrieval, a memory is pieced together from fragments, but during the reconstruction errors creep in due to our own biases and expectations.

20 memory tricks you’ll never forget.

The good news is there’s much we can do to preserve memory. But because the field of memory preservation is so new, doctors recommend weighing some advice more heavily than others.

They have found that phytochemical-rich foods, such as blueberries, are effective at reversing age-related deficits in memory, according to a study soon to be published in the science journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine.