2. How to improve brain memory

What is memory? A mechanism records, stores, and classifies information making its subsequent retrieval possible. Strictly speaking, we can identify it with the capacity to save, but we already know that this saving is as substantial as the contents and structure of the information.

How to improve any intellectual capability is a recurrent topic. In this case, the first thing to keep in mind is the number of factors that influence regular working. This book analyzes the different types of memory according to several perspectives, and shows how some characteristics can help to improve its performance.

Improving an intellectual or physical ability does not mean that a human can acquire the ability to fly or anything of the sort - which is to say; there are aspects in the brain configuration due to genetics and the early development that act as limits to intellectual power.

Instead of how to improve memory, it would be better to say how to exercise this brain capacity to achieve all its inherent possibilities. From this point of view, the best advice is that an appropriate intellectual exercise will always be healthy. However, even if we are not studying a list of elements, the Visigoth kings, or the rivers and their tributaries, memory is always working because the brain does not tend to cease so often.

Exercising does not mean a memorizing effort to remember everything all day. With the general educational system, human memory works enough while attending school or university.

A significant part of brain memory labor is unconscious; there are not many ways of manipulating it, except facilitating the conditions of its performance or, better said, trying not to interrupt its natural working.

The entire third book of the Global Cognitive Theory deals with how to improve brain memory; nevertheless, the following aspects have a special significance.

• Memory works much more efficiently within a pleasant and relaxed environment. It is selective and remembers pleasant things much better; likewise, it hardly remembers the bad times; this effect is weightier the older the memories are.

• A complementary yet opposite aspect is that, when a person is nervous, memory works poorly, confusing almost everything. It is imperative to discuss specific topics with as much calmness as possible; otherwise, if objective information becomes confusing, there is no way to reason or understand the emotions.

  It seems as if the resources of the memory manager were not free; it would not work adequately.