Visual memory describes the relationship between perceptual processing and the Encoding....when items of use or interest are allowed to be converted into a construct that can be stored within the brain (memory), Storage....The process of placing newly acquired information into memory, and Retrieval....the mental process of retrieval of information from the past, of the neural representations.
That's the science bit, I could go on with all the long names and complicated jargon, but frankly, its a bit boring!
In terms I understand, visual memory is a form of memory which presents some characteristics of our senses pertaining to visual experiences. so the objects, places, animals or people we see are placed in visual memory into the brain as a mental image.
The visual memory retains the mental images and we retrieve, through our memory, a mental image of the original object, place, animal or person.
So, we use our eyes to see, but it is our brain that translates this information to make a image, if one or both are damaged, brain or eyes, the information is either unable to be translated into a image or, as it is for me, the eyes see or think they see a image, the visual memory kicks in and produces a image as near as it can to what my brain thinks I am seeing- complicated? confused?
Well, there's this fella called Dr Michael Prouix, he is one clever dude, and has done masses of research into all this brain and cognitive development stuff. One of these studies showed that people who are born blind have way more accurate memories than your average Joe with sight.
People with no visual experience at all had the best verbal and memory skills. This test was given to folks with sight, folks with late onset blindness and those born blind, results showed that blind people remember more words and were less likely to create false words of the words they had heard! The research also showed that we often recall words related to those we hear- so hearing the words chimney, cigar and fire for example, could trigger a false memory of the word smoke!
If someone said the word flower to you, your visual memory will produce a bank of images related to flowers, my visual memory will produce a image of the last flower I saw, and I have to think very hard for my brain to produce a image of any other flower.
Blind people also avoid unrelated words, so a fire would be a fire, not smoke or ash or heat, just fire.
There is also some sort of research to help understand the psychology of blindness. This is something that interests me greatly as I would love to explain why I can manage to do so much when my sight is so bad.
For a long time I worried that there was something wrong with my memory, it just doesn't seem to work like it used to, now I understand that it is working, just in a different way.
A good friend of mine recently told me that another friend of mine whom I hadn't seen in a long time had lost a lot of weight. When I saw her a few weeks later, she looked exactly the same as she did the last time I saw her. I felt terrible because I couldn't say, ohhh you look great, because I didn't understand why I wasn't seeing this weight loss. Everyone was saying how fab she looked, I felt frightened and frustrated, and it bothered me for a long while. NOW I understand that the image I have of her within my visual memory was retrieved and because my sight so awful, all I could do was connect the image in my memory to the voice I was hearing and remembered. There are also three ladies at work who are pregnant, all due around the same time, people keep saying, ohhh look at their beautiful bumps, I just don't see it, however one of the lovely ladies I worked with when she had her first baby, my memory is connecting my image of her from her first pregnancy so she looks pregnant!
This brain and memory thing is amazing if a little scary, as I have said before, we take for granted how very complex and clever our brains really are, how we seem to naturally adapt to the loss of one of our senses....bet you are also pleased I decided to waffle on tonight and I don't suppose I have made any sense at all!! Time for bed, I have worn myself out with all this thinking. speak soon x
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