Sunday, February 8, 2009

Hey everyone, this is Jessica, i've researched a lot on memory and its connection to the brain.

There are many types of memory, episodic memory is the memory of autobiographical and personal events. This is the type of memory that brings the emotion and feelings of a certain memory, this is the type that fits my project.
Episodic memory comes from the medial temporal lobe, which help us see, speak and hear. Inside the medial temporal lobe is the hippocampus, which are banana shaped structures inside the brain. There are two hippocampus in our brains, one on each side, left and right.
The hippocampus is the specific factor that helps us remember and store memories. These memories are 'saved' in the brain by the process of consolidation, which helps turn short term memories into long term ones.
This process happens mostly when we sleep, specifically in NREM sleep. NREM sleep is 'non rapid eye movement' sleep.
During this time of sleep, we do not move our eyes, and do not dream. This sleep phase happens when we first fall asleep.
Therefore, my product would have to somehow trigger the brain to go into NREM sleep phase.
I thought about having a drug that you would ingest that would make the person fall asleep and be able to stay in the NREM phase.
I was also thinking about making this become a service that I would provide instead of an 'at home' treatment. People would come to this building and they can take this drug, or get hooked up to a device, that would make this memory replay happen.
This is all very complex information so I would have to make this product very easy to understand for the average person to want to use it.

1 comment:

Olga said...

Hi Jessica,
Looks like you spent a serious amount of time on the research. Great! Go for it.
You are absolutely right about your role as a designer to make complex things accessable to the general public. How are you going to do it?
Will this new information lead you to change the logos or you stay with them. What are your questions to us, typefamily?

Olga