Autobiographical Memory, The Wonderful Memories Of Our Experiences

Remembering our best friend in childhood, the smell we liked best, who we were and how we enjoyed life are matters of autobiographical memory. Can you imagine an existence without the memory of your desk mate? Of the first kiss? Or our favorite places as children?

These memories are the fruit of autobiographical memory, a concept that we will explain in the following lines. We will also immerse ourselves in its relationship with consciousness and present research studies on alternative treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, diseases that nullify our mental faculty.

What is autobiographical memory?

Autobiographical memory consists in the recollection of personal experiences. It is the most important element of our biography, as it acts as an organizer of our experiences.

It arises from interaction with the world and is defined by what we do. According to José María Ruiz-Vargas, lecturer and researcher at the faculty of psychology at the Autonomous University of Madrid, autobiographical memories are characterized by:

• The relationship with the self. Because they contain information that helps structure and define it.

• Narrative structure. When we evoke personal experiences from the past, we tell a story. Thus, “experience becomes narrative through recovery” (Ruiz-Vargas, 2004, p.10).

• Mental images. Autobiographical memories are evoked by including visual images and other sensory modalities, such as hearing and smell.

• Emotional component. Emotions can reinforce memories.

The recovery of the personal past, therefore, does not manifest itself in a uniform way, but varies in each of us and also according to the phase of life in which we find ourselves.

How is it structured?

Autobiographical memory consists of two elements:

• Episodic autobiographical memory. It concerns the memories of the past, or those associated with personal experiences carried out in a specific place and time.

• Semantic autobiographical memory. They are memories associated with events that occur repeatedly and past experiences that span long periods of time.

Some examples of episodic autobiographical memories are as follows: “I remember that day when I dived and saw a turtle for the first time” or “I remember when I was hospitalized because I was suffering from depression”. An autobiographical semantic memory would be: “As a child, I used to visit my grandmother every Saturday”.

If we analyze both types of memory, we notice that the episodic one is correlated to a subjective time, therefore it allows us to relive the experiences through the autonoetic conscience; in other words, one has the sensation of reliving the experiences as in a sort of time travel. Semantic autobiographical memory, on the other hand, is characterized by a limited awareness of the sense of familiarity.

Autobiographical memory today

It still represents a dimension to be explored today, especially as regards the field of neurodegenerative diseases and post-traumatic stress disorders. Here, we will delve into Alzheimer’s disease.

The person with Alzheimer’s experiences a slow deterioration of the autobiographical memory. However, several researches have shown that this phenomenon manifests itself differently depending on the individual and in normal or pathological aging.

When we remember our past, we formulate a thought associated with episodic memory, which is less than semantic. People with Alzheimer’s disease are unlikely to recover from episodic autobiographical events.

To study autobiographical memory in people with Alzheimer’s, some experts have resorted to reminiscence, or the evocation of memories. For example, El haj, Fasotti & Allain (2012), in their article published in the journal Consciouness and Cognition , examined the involuntary nature of autobiographical memories evoked by music. Other authors have evoked memories through images, videos and even smells.

In short, autobiographical memory is closely linked to who we are, since it concerns our experiences, in general and in detail. Autobiographical memories are evoked differently in the case of normal or pathological aging. In addition to this, people with Alzheimer’s show a progressive loss of this cognitive ability.

Even today the scientific community is dedicated to the study of this memory and we hope to soon receive new data on its functioning both in normal health conditions and in the case of pathologies.