Neurologists are only beginning to understand how the parts are reassembled into a coherent whole. The entire image of 'pen' is actively reconstructed by the brain from many different areas. Each part of the memory of what a 'pen' is comes from a different region of the brain. If you think of an object - say, a pen - your brain retrieves the object's name, its shape, its function, the sound when it scratches across the page. What seems to be a single memory is actually a complex construction. When the brain processes information normally, all of these different systems work together perfectly to provide cohesive thought. Your 'memory' is really made up of a group of systems that each play a different role in creating, storing, and recalling your memories. Instead, that memory was the result of an incredibly complex constructive power - one that each of us possesses - that reassembled disparate memory impressions from a web-like pattern of cells scattered throughout the brain. But today, experts believe that memory is far more complex and elusive than that - and that it is located not in one particular place in the brain but is instead a brain-wide process.ĭo you remember what you had for breakfast this morning? If the image of a big plate of fried eggs and bacon popped into your mind, you didn't dredge it up from some out-of-the-way neural alleyway. Others likened memory to a neural supercomputer wedged under the human scalp. In the past, many experts were fond of describing memory as a sort of tiny filing cabinet full of individual memory folders in which information is stored away. It's a concept that refers to the process of remembering. But your memory doesn't exist in the way a part of your body exists - it's not a 'thing' you can touch.

Most people talk about memory as if it were a thing they have, like bad eyes or a good head of hair.

Dredge up memories meaning