Foundational Scientific Literature Regarding Memory and Learning.

¶ … foundational scientific literature regarding memory and learning. Memory and learning have long been popular subjects of study by psychologists. Although the results of such studies were very insightful, it was difficult to draw deeper, more fundamental conclusions about the learning and memory experiments. However, the rapidly advancing field of neurobiology has provided the field with a deeper understanding of the biological processes underlying learning and memory.

Studies regarding memory using imagery and cognitive mapping

Imagery is often used to improve memory through the process of encoding. When the brain sees a certain image associated with a certain piece of information, it is able to encode that association into the brain. (Goldstein, 2008, p. 347). When the person is given a prompt to recall that information, the brain has an additional prompt, the image associated with that information, to aid in the recollection of that information.

Organization helps to improve the process of encoding which enhances long-term memory. When the brain is presented with unorganized information, it automatically works at organizing that information into something that it can understand. (Goldstein, 2008, p. 349). This is illustrated in the method of loci, developed by the ancient Greek Poet Simonides. The method of loci organizes information in a mental image of a spatial layout. If one imagines oneself placing pieces of information in unique locations within a familiar spatial layout, one is more likely to remember that piece of information when one encounters that location later.

The method of loci developed 2500 years ago by tragic poet Simonides is actually the first formal example of the process that would later be known as cognitive mapping. Cognitive mapping is "a process composed of a series of psychological transformations by which an individual acquires, codes, stores, recalls, and decodes information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday spatial environment." (Dagan, 2011).

Mirror neurons and learning

In 1996, Giacomo Rizzolatti, Leonardo Fogassi and Vittorio Gallese, published their groundbreaking research on a special class of brain cells which literally reflect actions perceived in the outside world. In their study, they observed that the set of neurons which were activated during one action, for example, when a person picks up a banana, were also activated when the observer saw someone else picking up a banana. (Rizzolati, 1996, p. 593). Because this newly discovered subset of cells seemed to directly reflect, in the observer's brain, acts which were actually performed by others, the scientists called the cells "mirror neurons." (Rizzolati, 1996, p. 593).

Rizzolati's team believed that these "mirror neurons" hardwire blueprints for specific actions in the brain just as circuits of neurons store specific memories within the brain. (Rizzolati, 2006, p. 58). This property may allow an individual not only to perform basic motor procedures without thinking about them but also to comprehend those acts when they are observed. (Rizzolati, 2006, p. 60). The discovery of mirror neurons reveals a new avenue for human understanding, connecting and learning. The concept of mirror neurons could revolutionize our understanding of learning and intelligence.

Although the biological basis of mirror neurons have only recently been discovered, their function has been illustrated in the above-mentioned studies of imagery and cognitive mapping. Imagery and cognitive mapping can enhance long-term memory through their addition of avenues for the recollection of certain pieces of information. Imagery adds an additional avenue to recollection by encoding the association of an image with a piece of information in one's brain. (Fields, 2011, 185-6). The type of associative learning induced by imagery is also believed to be responsible for the functioning of mirror neurons. (Heyes, 2010, 581). The associated image leaves an additional prompt for that information within the brain, highly useful when the original prompt for that information, one's memory of receiving that information is no longer available.

When the image used is enriched by additional properties, such as its location in a familiar spatial layout, the result is cognitive mapping. Cognitive mapping also uses the process of association to enhance long-term memory, but the associations are richer and more numerous in a cognitive map. (Yeap, 2011, 4). Thus, cognitive mapping makes use of indirect associations in addition to direct associations.

Visualization and mental mapping are able to enhance long-term memory because our brain hardwires information that we perceive in the external word into these special mirror neurons. (Shapiro, 2009, p. 442). These neurons are special because they are the same neurons that are activated when we recall that information. (Shapiro, 2009, p. 440). Thus, mirror neurons help explain why imagery and cognitive mapping are so much more conducive to long-term memory than auditory means, such as repeating information: because the process of visualization serves to encode the information in the same neurons that are activated when one attempts to recollect that information.

Mirror neurons are not only activated by images perceived in the external world, they are also activated by an individual's internal mental imagery. Mirror neurons allow certain associations of pieces of information to be consolidated by perceiving mental imagery. For example, one does not need to physically visit and view the location in order to for mirror neurons to be activated, it is enough to visualize the spatial layout in one's mind.