About those memories

On today's NIH Director's Blog there is a fascinating post about the brain and memory. One paragraph jumped out at me:

After any new memory is formed, there’s a period of up to about 24 hours during which the memory is malleable. Then, the memory tends to stabilize. But with each retrieval, the memory can be modified as it restabilizes, a process known as memory reconsolidation.

This ties in with a book I just finished reading (sorry, didn't extract from it), The Invisible Gorilla, where they cover the malleability of memory and how even those indelible memories, like 9/11, the explosion of the Challenger, JFK's assassination, are actually quite malleable and not impressed as indelibly as we would like to think.

Food for thought…

In praise of the liberal arts

There's a marvelous blog called Bob on Books that I read regularly. Normally he reviews books—a wide variety of books, but mainly Christian ones. But sometimes he offers musings on other things. Today is one of those days. Here's an excerpt, but please take the extra couple of minutes to read the whole thing—and maybe even add him to your daily reading!

A good liberal education helps people explore all these questions, and consider whether the answers of others address the questions of the day. I wonder sometimes whether the effort to eradicate what was once a staple of education is a recognition of the dangerous character of such an education. It fosters the asking of hard questions of oneself and one’s society. Questions people ask. Questions cogs do not ask.

I asked the question of how long it would take for people to wake up to what they’ve missed or lost. I suspect some never do, the amusements and distractions of life precluding such awakenings. Others get twenty years into a career only to discover that they have no clue why they are doing what they do other than that it pays well.