The information is transmitted through the five senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste) to the brain. These data are used by the brain with its 5 basic aptitudes: attention, memory, learning, recall and speech, employing its 10 billion neurons and its 40 billion connections per cubic centimeter.
1.Attention selects information that must be retained. For example, during a noisy party, our brain focuses on just one conversation as it cannot listen to all at the same time. This is the selective character of the attention.
If we listen to two voices, one clear and one blurry, and if the first voice turns blurry too, the brain starts to pay attention to both voices. It is focusing on the voice that can be understood, not any voice. The brain pays little attention but it can rapidly switch attention on it when words turn having a meaning.
The attention can focus on a channel till it is diverted by a more important thing. The brain functions by mitigating just to the most important information. If a succession of important facts occurs, the brain increases attention. If we focus on a visual information, the other senses are largely stopped not to distract attention from that thing.
2.Memory has three types: imprinting sensory memory (IMS), short term memory (STM) and long term memory (LTM).
IMS is an immediate temporary perception of the information. The information can stay just 0.3 seconds in IMS. If not selected in STM, it is lost.
STM retains information
for a few seconds, to be used later, like a phone number. It is not permanent. Focusing on another task or executing it shatters the STM. STM works just for 6-7 data. A phone number made of 7 ciphers can be easily deposited in STM, but few can rapidly retain a 10 ciphers number.
Repetition is the way an information passes from STM to LTM. More repetition increases this chance. The repetition can occur unconscious but also conscious, like when memorizing a poem.
LTM enables us to remember things that happened years ago and deposits learned information. The information is stored in the brain's cortex, but the hippocampus is involved in processing the memory as well. LTM is explained as a permanent modification in a network of cortical neurons.
3.Learning forms mental connections between memories. It can be conditioned, the brain creating connections between various environmental phenomena, like in the case of the experiments made by Pavlov more than one century ago, when a dog salivates at hearing of a bell. The animal learned to associate it with food, no matter if it received the food or not.
Instrumental learning connects an action and its result, accompanied with an estimation. If the result is the desired one, the action may be repeated, if not, it is less probable. As we say, we learn from our mistakes.
In the case of the animals, action and result must be connected in time. A seal will keep rolling the ball if it receives the fish. Man and apes go further. They have connective learning. If a chimp pushes a certain button for receiving a banana, it will learn it trough attempts and mistakes. If the chimps has to pull a rope to access the button, it learns this too. It can also learn to make a twist to get to the button. This is a chain of connected actions to reach the banana.
Humans learn similarly. Some actions are simple, requiring 3-4 stages, like making a coffee, but others require years, like playing a guitar, or sculpture.
4.The recall brings back memories in the conscience. The easiest form is recognizing, through a sample, an image with the basic traits of the thing to be remembered. The brain seeks into its "archive" a model fitting with the sample.
Recalling through clues is very difficult. If the sample does not find the information, more clues must be added. To recall an event, previous and subsequent information can help.
Many times we associate events between them. We are able to remember what we were doing when the 9/11 event took place, for example.
In the case of amnesia, memory may not have been lost, but the recall system is affected. That's why psychiatric treatment or professional hypnosis can help recalling deeply stocked information, even from the childhood. But this can lead, too, to confabulation or memory errors, when a person creates a similar memory from a series of similar events. The person can even believe that what she/he is "recalling" is real.
The false memories can appear also in case of physical and mental instability, vitamin shortage, and alcoholism. Recalling loss is also a sign of advanced senile symptom.
5.Speech transmits information from person to person. It is specific to humans. The information can circulate this way without the people having to learn from their own experience. This contributes to the intellectual progress of the humankind. The speech ability is located in the left cortex.
Animals can communicate too , but in a rudimentary way, comparing to humans. But our speech ability is also related to our larynx and vocal cords. Chimps cannot speak but can be taught to communicate through a sign language. Some apes (chimps, bonobos, gorillas or orangutans) were able to use 1,000 signs and understand 3,000 words in English. But they cannot use grammar or sophisticated constructions for expressing sophisticated ideas.
Still, they understand in an intelligent manner what they learn, for more than simple "I want water" or "give me an apple". A female chimp called Lucy was grown for 10 years amongst humans and taught the sign language. After that, she was released to live amongst wild chimps. When the researchers returned two years later, she signaled desperately: "Help! Out!".
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