Gray Matter & My Memory
I presume 45 years of my life would have taken some sharpness off my gray matter resulting in selective memory retention?
Why this sudden realization, you may ask ? Well, I came across my grade school classmate Sarita on Facebook, she remembered me & Seema; Seema (same school, now my wife) remembered her but I could not really place her!
Why? It beats me, I do have very fond memories of this excellent catholic missionary run school "Rosary School" me & Seema went to. I remember the teachers, Mr. Augustine, Mrs Mathew, Mrs Sunaina Ramson our Sanskrit teacher (who threw me out of her class record numbers of times), Mr. Singh (Singhada), Mrs Gangadharan & Mrs. Rita Kapoor our biology teacher, Mrs Lajja our Hindi teacher & above all our sports teacher Mr. Massey & his stories of presumed valour.
I remember the white robed principal's, the white sari clad, loving, catholic sisters (wore Sari's just like mother Teresa's), the vast school lawns, the eagles at lunch break, the canteen, the dog plate Dosa, the "Amarak ki chat", the gardener- Gainda Singh, the dwarf south Indian cook our principal's had. I remember the school picnics, the teacher's days, the school functions. Hell, I remember almost all of my school life !
If I remember so much how come I only remember just a handful of school mates, when I had all the above memories shared with them, day in & day out. I must remember their names! Faces, I remember but names always allude me, ALWAYS.
So is it my gray matter? May be my brain's hippocampus is hardwired to just remember faces & not names associated with them. Something, that's worth researching right?
My research (hey I just Google'd the subject like any sane person would) suggests that keeping ones gray matter sharp with their exercising will increase the grey cells that in turn help ones hippocampus flush with these new grey cells leading to a healthy long term memory.
Uncle Google suggested a lot of ways for gray matter exercising like this one - http://www.lumosity.com/ but I came across another rather good one - http://deathball.net/notpron/ that would really task your brain.
Back to my friend Sarita Chadha (Sarita Aneja in school) well I do remember you now & fun thing is I've just had my grey matter exercised - quod erat demonstrandum .
