the basic science of memory and attention

9.1. The Basic Science of Memory and Attention — Transcript (English)

Summary:

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Transcript

Welcome to this new segment.

It will be dedicated to journaling.

And we’ll start by talking about the basic signs of memory and attention.

In part, this will help to further clarify why Baseworks works the way it does.

And in part, this will explain why we included journaling in the course as a tool that may be very helpful for your progress.

So let’s first talk about memory.

Do you remember how you learned to tie your shoes or ride a bicycle?

Even if you don’t remember a particular day, I’m sure you have a recollection that it wasn’t easy and that it took some time and practice.

Whichever way I’m sure that now these skills are automatic, but at one point they took a lot of effort and focus to learn.

So forming these types of skills is an example of a type of memory which is called procedural memory.

In science we often talk about three types of memory.

Procedural, episodic and semantic.

So let’s break this down so you can see why it matters in base works.

Procedural memory is essentially about skills.

How to do things like riding a bicycle or chopping vegetables or dancing or even being able to effortlessly draw the shoulders down in every form in Baseworks.

It’s a memory that your body and your brain build together through experience and practice.

Then there is episodic memory, and it’s like a snapshot of your personal experience, like remembering the happiest moment of your life or what you ate for breakfast today.

And then finally, there is semantic memory, and it’s about facts and general knowledge, like for example, knowing the capital of France or the definition of Distributed Activation in in frameworks.

Now here’s the problem.

Even though we call all these memory, they work in very different ways and you cannot just take something from one type of memory and put it into another type of memory, like you can download a file from the cloud storage to hard disk.

So if we explain, for example, what micromovements are, and you can explain it to somebody else the next day, that’s semantic memory, you understand it intellectually.

But that alone won’t make you be able to do the micromovements and will not lead to any perceptual changes.

To build a skill or this procedural memory, you have to practice the thing you want to remember, feel it in your body and repeat it over time.

This is why Baseworks isn’t something that you can just read about or watch a video once or twice to get it.

You have to experience it and let your body learn it as a procedural memory.

We often say that it’s like learning a new language.

In language, vocabulary is mostly semantic memory, but the grammar is procedural.

And yes, you can learn the rules as formulas in your head, but you have to practice the language to be able to speak it fluently.

So this primary course is like an introduction to a new language, where we explain the grammar, but then you need to practice it to commit it to your procedural memory.

This is why, for example, repeating the practice labs is such an integral part of this process.

Now let’s talk about attention because it’s also a very big topic that explains how and why we do things in Baseworks.

Attention is actually a very complex topic and my favorite review article about attention is called “No one knows what attention is”.

But let’s just agree that we understand each other when we talk about attention and let’s say that it’s like a flash light.

It shines on certain things and leaves other things in the dark.

But then there’s a problem.

You can only pay attention to what you’re able to perceive.

For example, if you’re blind, you cannot focus on a visual target because you just cannot see it.

In Baseworks, we work with very subtle sensations in your body and in space.

If you have not trained to notice those sensations, it’s like they’re invisible to your mind’s eye.

You cannot shine the flashlight of your attention on them yet.

This is where where Baseworks is a bit different from various mindfulness practices that you may be familiar with, like some types of meditation.

In mindfulness, you learn to control where your flashlight of attention points and how stable it is, maybe by focusing on your breath or maybe whatever physical sensations are currently present.

And that’s very important, but Baseworks takes it a step further.

We’re not just learning to move the flashlight, we’re trying to make the picture itself more clear.

So it’s like upgrading from a low resolution screen to a high definition one.

Through practice, you learn to discern sensations and movement details that you couldn’t notice before, like sensing individual muscles or sensing positions of different body parts in a unified reference frame.

It’s technically called somatosensory discrimination, and it’s a kind of discrimination that you want more of and not less.

And now let’s come back If I asked you what did you have for breakfast this morning, provided you had breakfast, you probably would be able to recall it quite easily.

But if I asked you what was the sensation between your shoulder blades while you were having your breakfast, it’s likely that you will have more difficulty recalling this information.

Why?

Because perhaps it wasn’t as important when you were eating your breakfast.

So it didn’t receive enough attention, therefore it wasn’t marked as important to be committed to memory.

You will most likely forget your today’s breakfast within a few days, but right now at this very moment, you will still have the breakfast episode in your memory.

Although the details about the sensations in your back probably are already gone.

So although an episodic memory is like a snapshot of your experience, not all details are committed to that memory with the same vividness.

We forget things if we don’t reinforce them.

It’s called the forgetting curve.

And it’s especially true for delicate things like bodily sensations that often don’t even have clear words to describe them.

There’s the good news.

When we write things down, and this is obviously how it’s tied into journaling, we’re more likely to remember them.

Writing forces us to think about what we experienced, organize it, give it a shape and a name.

Even at first, maybe it’s hard to put into words.

This idea is actually widely used in fantasy fiction where naming something gives you control over it.

But even in our real world, naming something makes it more vivid, visible, communicable, and more resistant to forgetting.

So the process of writing things down literally helps the brain to rewire itself, what’s called neuroplasticity, so that you can notice more details and control your movements better over time.

So in a way, the act of journaling, writing things down, is even more important than rereading what you wrote.

So when we talk about journaling, it’s about dissecting your most recent episodic memory, which is still fresh, including all the subtle details, which will be the first ones to fade away.

So you analyze the memory, you extract the relevant details and we’ll talk about which details are relevant in the next lesson.

And sometimes you may even have to invent your own phrases to describe something.

And this process will inform your next experiences.

Because if you’ve identified a pattern and even named it, it will be much easier to notice it again, or to point your attention flashlight on it.

And this practice of noticing subtle changes in your body also keeps you motivated.

Because your practice becomes like a treasure hunt, which constantly surprises you and rewards you with micro-achievements.

Okay, so I know I talked for a long time.

Let’s look at the important takeaways here.

Semantic memory cannot be directly converted to procedural memory.

Forming a procedural memory requires practice.

Watching this course only once will do very little, please repeat practice labs.

Two, you can only pay attention to what you’re able to perceive and what we’re able to perceive is different from person to person and it is shaped by our past experiences.

The good news is that perception is a trainable skill. we just need to practice noticing the right thing.

And three, episodic memories fade away and the subtle details fade away faster and more easily.

But by noticing and verbalizing such sensations, we can partially stabilize these memories.

And most importantly, paying attention to these subtle sensory details leads to neuroplasticity.

And our brain rewires itself to be able to pay attention to these cues again in the future.

So with all this in mind, let’s move on to the next lesson where we will talk about the more practical side of journaling is an actual tool.