Drunkeness

Excuse me if this seems like a bit of a stupid question, or that the answer is obvious, but this is something I've been thinking about for the past week.

Anyway, last week I was out on the town and for the first time, I couldn't remember some parts of the night and needed a little bit of reminding. Usually, I remember everything regardless of how much I drink.

About 2 days after, some people were talking about something that happened that night and I suddenly remembered the event, although I hadn't thought about it at all after it happened.

I know most agree that rehearsal of information helps us keep it in long-term memory, but I hadn't thought about this particular event at all until it was mentioned again and suddenly it came back to me, so I obviously hadn't rehearsed what happened in my mind. Or does rehearsal only apply to remembering numbers etc?

I've only been studying memory for a few weeks and I feel a bit silly for posting this, but a reply would be appreciated. Be nice.

Reply 1

Spacecam

Doesn't alcohol inhibit functioning of neuroreceptors and the mechanisms involved in forming a new memory - resulting in the "connections" to be less "strong", resulting in a prompt being needed for the new circuit to be followed - much like learning by trial and error and cognitive therapy??? Memory isn't my best area...

Reply 2

Lao Ma

Incidentally, in our lesson yesterday the topic of not remembering when drunk came up and it was said that alcohol restricts neurotransmitters such as acetylcholine which results in lack of consolidation and that's why we can't remember some stuff very well.

I was reading about the decay theory last night and it said that it doesn't account for the times when we remember something that happened but we hadn't thought about it since it happened, similarly to what happened to me.

Reply 3

shewantstobeme

You get cue dependancy too, where you can use cues to recall information, rather than rehearsal.
There's one type of cue where if you set your mind to imagine the place the event happened, you recall it (context-dependant).
So I guess your cues were remembering the event taking place in the location.

I'm doing CW on this atm! I love it :smile:

A study was done, and it found you performed higher in a test if you revised drunk, then did the test drunk! Psychology is fab.

Reply 4

Lao Ma

Yeah, and the one where people who learned underwater recalled the material underwater better.

We're just starting AS memory coursework and have to do an introduction by Friday. I missed last Friday's lesson so got the sheets on Tuesday and I just assumed the sheet would tell us to do a general intro on memory. However, it says we also have to mention what we are looking at, what we aim to find out and the hypothesis. I don't know whether they decided as a class what they were going to do or that we have to come up with an experiment individually, and I can't see anybody about it until the lesson.

Should I come up with any old research stuff just for now just for the sake or writing the intro to show her and then modifying it when I've spoke to her?

Any ideas about what to look at in memory?