Assigned Blog

Whenever I am prompted to think about memory and the photograph, a few things strike me with regards to my major (Biology).

The mind is a fascinating piece of art and machinery, and is ever more intriguing due to the fact that we don’t fully understand how it works. This is the one aspect of my discipline that speaks to me when we are talking about memory and the photograph because it is unknown and mystifying. What is the mechanism by which we remember? We know how neurons fire, how electricity flows… but really, how do we remember? And we have read about how senses contribute to ease of remembering, but how do photographs? Do they act as a portal opening up a section of the mind inaccessible without a queue? Proust is a Neuroscientist speaks to this specifically – we know that smell or taste might help one remember something because those senses connect directly to the hippocampus, “the center of the brain’s long-term memory,” whereas all of the other senses are first intercepted by the thalamus, the source of language, rendering them “less efficient at summoning our past.”It is also interesting to consider the scientific difference in processing memories and dreams; Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks addresses that a quarter of college students find it difficult to determine if something they specifically remembered was a dream or if it actually happened.

Theories abound on this topic. Many believe that thinking over a memory many times, as well as speaking it aloud, helps us remember it (Chapter 6 of Memory Observed). Based on the theories that we have read, I contend that this is the case, whether that remembrance is accurate to what actually happened or not; and that photography is a visual queue that can lead one to entertain many memories, regardless of whether the photograph is theirs or familiar to them.