A Key Discovery about Human Memory

Blake Brailsford

Dr. Michaela Gazdik Stofer

Biology 1610

16 March 2017

It’s a Bird, it’s a Plane, it’s a key discovery about Human Memory.

As a child I would watch superman cartoons every Saturday morning, and I can still remember the famous quote from the opening line for those cartoons, “Look up in the sky! it’s a bird, it’s a plane, its Superman!” I remember this because its one of my favorite childhood memories. John Hopkins university has done some experimentation that hopefully answered this question: Do people’s vast ability to recall information have something to do with our core knowledge? When we see objects in two different places and surroundings, do we form a stronger memory of it? Professor Jonathan Flombaum and his graduate assistant Mark Shurgan, think so.

Flombaum and Shurgan both think that human’s memory improves significantly with detail when an objects appearance changes as it moves through space and time. They also believe that this helps with long-term memory.

Another important part of their findings includes the belief that the way we as humans look at ourselves is only a small part of how we know who we are. As we see people moving across a room we generally see them in different lighting, different angles, space and distances. This will help us as humans recognize each other later.

With visual memory, what matters to our brain is that the object we are seeing is the same. We are more likely to recognize an object if we can see it moving the same path.

The Test: in a series of experiments, Flambaum, and Shurgan showed test subjects a short video clips of moving objects, such as a waffle iron, griddle, tweezers, statues, beach balls umbrellas etc. sometimes the object moved across the screen as a single object would, in one direction from left to right. Other times the object moved in ways we wouldn’t expect; such as dropping out from one side of the screen, then the other.

In every experiment, test subjects had significantly better memories of what these objects where, and what colors they were, and color, according to what our expectation had been. 20% better.

Our brain has certain automatic rules for how it expects things in this world to behave; these rules affect our memory, for what we see! Researchers at John Hopkins University expect these findings to help computer scientists to build smarter machines that can perform this very task of recognizing objects by studying and learning how humans do it.

This article fascinates me, I have always wondered how we use our brain and how it helps us recognize and familiarize ourselves with others and the world around us. The brain and the study of it has a very significant part of my life. I love looking at its anatomy, the different parts of the brain and the functions each part has. I am grateful for my brain and the way it functions; we are so incredibly lucky to have the ability to be as intelligent and knowledgeable about our own human anatomy. The brain and the spinal cord both are huge factors in central nervous system. I am looking for any way I can improve and become a more knowledge able and intellectual student, and I think that this article about how we remember objects and humans in different situations will most definitely help.