Although we remember a lot throughout our lifetimes, our brain is often a let down when it’s time to recall these memories. Daniel Schacter calls the deviation in our memory recalls as ‘seven sins of memory’. This may be due to transient factors: that memories fade as we age particularly if they are not used frequently. Absentmindedness is often due to faulty storage, perhaps because it was not being processed at the time of storage, allowing our brains to categorize information as unimportant. Blocking is when we cannot remember something because another thought is getting in the way, leading to the tip of the tongue syndrome. Sometimes, the retrieval process is flawed, which results in us recalling the information incorrectly and attributing it to the wrong source. Persistence is when we cannot erase memory, whether it is forgotten or blocked because it becomes too firmly entrenched within our brain.
Mind and brain
In many cultures around this world, there is the view that humans have a soul that exists independently of the physical body. For Greek philosophers, the soul was also viewed as the seat of our reasoning abilities - what we would call our minds today. While Aristotle...
