Memory and the Experience of Time: Considerations of a Neurophysiologist

Abstract

Abstract. Learning and memory are fundamental higher brain functions that allow individuals to adapt to the environment, to build up their own history as unique creatures, to widen the personal cultural background and, ultimately, the population culture. The molecular and cellular mechanisms that contribute to short-and long-term memory are extremely conserved across evolution from mollusks to man and among various forms of memory and consist in short-to-long lived rearrangements in synaptic efficiency and in the structure of neuronal networks.Key words: synapse, plasticty, learning, memory consolidation, forgetting, future. InTrODUCTIOn "To feel today what one felt yesterday isn't to feel -it's to remember today what was felt yesterday, to be today's living corpse of what yesterday was lived and lost"Fernando Pessoa Memory is commonly seen as a positive ability of the individual to improve performance, indispensable for survival and social success. Forgetting, on the other hand, generally has a negative connotation, which is often associated with pathological states and/or aging. This common view is also reflected in our knowledge of the underlying biological processes. While thousands of papers have elucidated the processes of learning and memory from the molecular and cellular level up to the cognitive and psychological level, relatively few data are available on the mechanisms of forgetting.Memory and forgetting are daily processes of life, which allow us to select from our billions of experiences those that are the most relevant for our personal history and our culture. One could say that without forgetting, memory would be completely useless. This concept is very well exemplified by the short fantasy story "Funes el memorioso" by Jorge Luis Borges (1942