Working memory and the Panera incident

Recently, I had a turning point in my realizations that important facts are accidentally getting tossed out with the daily brain spam. I recently gave a gentleman directions to a Sandwich shop 20 minutes away only to spot one just a few yards away on my drive home. This was the same Sandwich shop where I had met friends and family countless times over the past decade and it had magically evaporated from my recollection.

So what do I do now? I know for one thing that it’s absolutely crucial to personally forbid myself from giving anyone directions even if it’s to my own house. But what or who will be my overloaded brain’s next victim? I remember hearing on the radio about how people in the horse and buggy days usually only knew 50-70 people at best. I take comfort in knowing that this could be a viable excuse that I plug after telling people about the “Panera incident.” And just when I’ve started contemplating the impossible (canceling cable TV and the internet in order to free my mind of information spam), I find reassurance from some quick web-browsing. Apparently, Harvard Medical School has brought to light the American Journal of Public Health’s claims that “A rich social life may also be more emotionally and intellectually stimulating, exercising the brain and fostering better neuronal connections and even nerve cell growth” (“Social networks and memory”, Harvard Medical School). This is very a good thing. I keep searching as I’m sure I can feel my tattered memory repairing itself with each passing second. The most inspirational information I come across is an abstract for a book called “The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory”. The abstract states that “working memory capacity-long thought to be static and hardwired in the brain-can be improved by training, and that the increasing demands on working memory may actually have a constructive effect: as demands on the human brain increase, so does its capacity.” This is outstanding!

Now I can say that I’m feeling quite hopeful that although my brain might be lacking in long term memory recollection it is by no means “full.” I can continue my daily smorgasbord of brain spamming and feel reassured that I won’t permanently forget about my first car or last weeks trip to the museum. As for temporarily forgetting about who I was with, what was said, where it happened… that’s what friends are for. I’ll just have to start conversations with a pleasant disclaimer like “I don’t know if this was you, but do you remember when we…”.

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