Thought Five: THE MIND explained

Netflix has come out with a new original series, THE MIND: explained. The series is comprised of five episodes which dive into explanations of the mind, including, dreams, mindfulness, and even psychedelics. I admit to watching all of them, more than once, yet, I decided to dissect the episodes that explore memory and anxiety. This week I will be providing my thoughts on memory. Next week, the anxiety episode will be introduced along with an article from one of our scholars! I believe memory and anxiety are mind concepts that tie directly to the classroom. Anxiety effects more students than instructors may be aware of, and memory is an everyday part of the classroom, assessments, etc. In the following paragraphs, I will be presenting details and examples from the episodes and relating them to classroom procedure and practice, as well as, teacher professional responsibility.

MEMORY

The episode begins by posing the question, "How does memory work?", then dives into memories that arguably make us who we are, significant memories. Significant memories, unfortunately, are not perfect recordings. For example, the episode asks people from various places around New York City what they remember about the events of September 11, 2001. People could recall elaborate, in depth details about the day, yet once there stories were fact-checked, most were blatantly wrong and could have never actually happened. Yet, how many documentaries, interviews, articles, etc. quote and express eye-witness reports of 09/11/2001 with great weight? And in that respect, where are other places eye-witness accounts, come into play? The episode argues that what can strengthen ones memory can also warp it. Imagination and memory seem to have very similar responses in our brain. Consequently, our brains tend to fill in gaps of our memories with bias and misconception, basically reconstructing our own memories. This highlights the flexibility of our memories, causing a problem in eye-witness identification in our legal system. False memories are confirmed; Looking into DNA exonerated cases, 70% of them had eye-witness accounts.

Along with playing with what we remember, the episode also asked how we remember. They introduce a Grandmaster of Memory, Yanjaa Winterson, who holds three world records revolving her memory. She competes in memory competitions, and is a guest on many shows including Steve Harvey in 2013. Yanjaa states that a healthy lifestyle in general is key to a good memory. She also mentions meditation as aiding in her memory, due to it improving her focus. She also provided examples of ways she easily remembers large amounts of information. For instance, in the episode, she is asked the memorize 500 numbers. She explained to recall this information from her memory, she creates a narrative: giving numbers sounds and creating outlandish details. She explains the concept of "The Memory Palace", which states people are inherently storytellers. She collaborates her outlandish story she has created from the numbers to a place or something she already knows. For example, her walk home. She explains she recalls the number list by experiencing her narrative on her walk home in her head. Yet, not everyone is signing up and participating in memory competitions, creating narratives for everything, and/or meditating. The episode wanted to look at the brain, along with Yanjaa's tips, to see their effects on humans. They explore the relation to the brain first by introducing Henry Molaison, a man who had to have a portion of his brain removed. After his procedure, he had no behavioral changes, yet had significant memory loss. They derived that in Molaison's explicit memory, his episodic memories seemed to be gone and cease to be constructed. When asked, "What did you do yesterday?" Molaison had no recollection. In parallel, when asked about the future, it was like being asked to "find a chair in an empty room". The episode was set on finding portions of the brain responsible for memory. They looked to sensory information and place, and their relationship with the hippocampus. In an example with rats in a maze, they show how "place" cells in the brain light up throughout specific portions of the maze, recalling the area. It seemed the same network engaged when looking for a remembered, specific place was engaged by sensory information. In contrast, from early, the same network was engaged when remembering and imagining. The episode argues the ability to do all four of these things in relation to each other helps us trouble shoot and is almost a super power, giving us our sense of self.

In the classroom, I believe I can apply what I learned from this episode into my specific content area, language arts. While learning vocabulary, sharing Yanjaa's remembrance strategy, I believe, will be quite helpful. I believe incorporating her idea into a journal entry where students need to incorporate all vocabulary words into a very creative narrative could aid in their remembrance of words, as well as, their use and meaning. I also believe I could incorporating meditation into the classroom, as it aids in focus and memory. Having a silent reading time where students have the option to meditate could be an easy way to add it into classroom time without taking away from content learning.