On memory and Old beer

My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer.

Think of Rheingold whenever you buy beer.

It's not bitter, not sweet; it's the dry flavored treat.

Won't you try extra dry Rheingold beer?

For no reason at all, at least no reason I can think of, this 1950s-era beer jingle popped into my head the other day. To make matters worse, I began singing it—and immediately, my friend Mitch began singing along. Because, of course, he knew the jingle, too, and the tune, such as it was.

Without really trying to, we had dredged it up from the deep recesses of our brains. We had not known at all that we remembered the jingle, had not thought of the jingle in years, but once the first few words came, the brain went into automatic response mold and there was the entire thing.

And yet, if you had asked me, or Mitch, what was the movie you saw last night or what’s the name of that guy you worked with last week or where is your wallet? We might not be able to answer. The beer jingle, no problem; did we close-the-garage door? question—that’s a problem.

This combination—remembering trivia from the deep past, forgetting important current information—is not, I think, unusual. Particularly as we age.

Neuroscientist Elizabeth Kensinger notes that what she calls “memory annoyances” are very common with aging.

“We forget things like proper nouns; we can’t think of someone’s name; we can’t think of the title of the book that we read last week,” she writes. “We also are more prone to forgetting some of the specifics, because with aging, there’s a transition toward the brain prioritizing the gist of what happened. The brain embraces the similarities across events rather than trying to hold on to each individualized event.”

That can lead, she goes on, to a lot of memory frustrations, and it also can make us prone to some types of memory distortions or false memories where we think something happened, but it was something slightly different. (The encouraging piece here is that this tendency for the brain to recognize the similarities across events may be one of the contributors to what we think of as wisdom that comes with age.)

I spent a good amount of time, Googling madly, trying to find out why we can’t remember where we left our glasses but can remember extremely trivial things, like a long-ago beer jingle, and I learned a lot about memory. But I’m still not sure I have a sufficient answer.

I learned about the common phenomenon of "memory trade-off," where our brains are wired to prioritize and remember information that is relevant to our survival, while less important information tends to fade away.

But the jingle, I’m pretty sure, was never relevant to my survival.

I learned about how memories can embed themselves when they are associated with strong emotions, such as fear or excitement.

But I was never scared of Rheingold or, for that matter, very excited by it. (I always preferred Ballantine.)

I learned that memory simply relies on the strength of neurons that are fired with a particular event. If an intellectual, emotional or instinctive response accompanied the event, additional neurons will fire. If the event is similar, related or associated in some way with something already in memory, more neurons will fire.

Every memory, that is, has neural pathways to those similar, related or associated memories such that a random sensory input can cause a random memory to be recalled.

But what could the Rheingold beer jingle be connected to?

Memory retention, according to researchers, is determined by specific neurotransmitters, proteins/amino acids and ions stored in our neurons and synapses. A memory’s chemical encoding represents the basis for memory accessing and represents how important each memory is.

In other words, the chemically represented valuation of a memory determines how long it will be retained and also influences how long the memories that share encoded relationships to it are retained.

Got all that? Does all that have any relevance to why we remember dumb jingles?

Finally, I learned from a recent report in the journal Nature, that memory is an adaptive process, continually updating itself according to what knowledge may be important in the future. The new study suggests that memory has, in effect, a just-in-case file, keeping seemingly trivial sights, sounds and observations in cold storage for a time in case they become useful later on.

I n other words, Mitch and I are ready if Rheingold ever comes back. In the meantime, we’ll just sit down on our convertible couch and see what pops up.

Who was the first to conquer space?

It’s incontrovertible!

Who’s the first to conquer living space?

It’s a Castro Convertible!

Who conquered space with fine design—

Who saves you money all the time?

Who’s tops in the convertible line?

Castro Convertible!