How memory works (3)

People who have "no memory" cant survive by themselves, so before you complain, know that you have a memory, in fact you got a lot in a very complicated system.

STEP ONE: SENSORY MEMORY

Anything you look at or hear or smell or touch gets processed by your brain: you may imagine that a small computer is there in your brain to code the signals the brain receives from each sense. That small computer is called sensory memory, The event is encoded but it does not stick there very long. Suppose you are used to smell mildew, you do not pay attention to it when you go home, this interesting information (that you should clean the bathroom or find out if there is a leak in the roof) just goes away immediately. Suppose you listen to a boring professor who tells you about history and you do not pay any attention, well the information does not stick either. This is expressed in lots of proverbs; the French and the Italians say "In one ear and out the other"; Kenyans put more faith in education and say "After a deaf ear comes death but after a listening ear come blessings".

Sometimes one brain computer gets such a strong signal that the other computers stop transmitting. I remember a beautiful classic concert in Paris. I was all into the music with everybody else, and suddenly a terrible smell of fried fish came from the air conditioning. Quite a number of people moved in their seats and looked around to see where the smell was coming from and I bet that, just like me, for a while they did not hear the music at all!