Memorable Life

“How’s life?” a friend of mine had asked.

“Pretty good, thank you,” I had responded, grinning. Considering that I almost always respond using the same words, the grin conveyed my true feelings—I was happy. The happiness had stayed on with me since earlier during that day when my son had hugged me and my wife had said something really nice. In other words, a bunch of “happy” memories had made me define my life as “pretty good.” Hence, it would probably be safe to say that the quality of our lives is directly influenced by the memories we keep. Our lives, irrespective of being good or bad, are defined by a bunch of memories.

OK, so if memories are that important, it would probably serve us good to understand how they are formed and how they are retained.

We all know that memory is commonly divided into at least two stages—a short-term memory that is volatile and lasts only a few minutes and a long-term memory that is stable and can last for days, weeks, months, or even years. 

Some of our short-term memory gets converted to long-term memory. Recent research suggests that the transition from short-term to long-term memory requires a spurt of new protein synthesis. It’s important to note that proteins are needed in everything we do—with every thought, every dream, every action, we use a constant supply of proteins. However, during the conversion of short-term memory to long-term memory, i.e., during the consolidation phase, the emphasis is on new proteins—we need a spurt of new proteins to form our memories. New proteins can only be formed by turning on genes. This is the genetic switch—in order to remember something in the long term, genes must be switched on.

Not surprisingly, given the complexity of memory, the action of this genetic switch for long-term memory is complex. Each gene has “gene activators” and “gene repressors” that bind to the regulatory regions of the gene. So at earliest stages of switching on the gene, there is powerful control. Hence to switch on the gene, the control needs to be overcome by activating the gene activators and eliminating the gene repressors. The genetic switch, thus turned on, produces new proteins, which in turn create the growth of synaptic connections that form memory.

Once memory is formed and is stable for a considerable period, memory can maintain itself by using the proteins that are already available. Consider for a moment, that you are injected with a drug that inhibits protein synthesis (by preventing the activation of gene activators for example) while reading this blog post. Will you retain any memory of ever reading this post? Probably not … this also is the case if you do not find this post interesting. However, if you are injected with the same drug an hour after reading the post (and probably only if you find the post interesting) you’ll most likely remember it, since after an hour the memory is stable and no new proteins need to be created to retain it. This implies that a certain “effort” is required to overcome the challenge of turning on the genetic switch—either artificially (by injecting drugs as an example) or naturally (by changing the way we react to experiences). In short, when our emotions are heightened—when we are involved passionately—we do tend to remember things more. The height of joy and the height of sorrow will invariably be etched in our memory for a long time to come as opposed to the mundane happenings of day-to-day existence. A lifetime of such memories, encoded in the constantly renewed connections between and among our brain cells, influences the way we think and react, and makes us who we are.

With further understanding of the mechanisms that form memory, we might eventually be able to control the quality of our lives by choosing to remember only what we want to remember. We might only retain the memories of love and compassion and conveniently forget the memories of hate and intolerance. Only then, the key to a “memorable” life will be in our hands.