Recognizing the promise of modern neuroscience, President George Bush acted on a joint resolution of Congress to proclaim 1990-99 the Decade of the Brain.

Neuroscientists, energized by this evidence of national support, have committed themselves to advancing their research for our benefit. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Library of Congress have combined forces to establish a decade-long lecture series to introduce members of Congress, their staffs, and the public to exciting breakthroughs in our understanding of the brain and aging.

You are what you know, what you have learned, and what you can remember. Memory and learning, the process of forming memories, goes beyond the individual to transmit culture from generation to generation. Memory problems, on the other hand, lead to loss of contact with one's self, one's history, one's interactions; they haunt the developing infant as well as the elderly adult. Educating our young, training the nation's work force, reforming those who have strayed from societal norms, and maintaining the intellectual effectiveness of an aging population are central to the missions of our society, and memory and learning play a critical role in each of these tasks.

Given that effective memory and learning are so important, neuroscientists are making a concerted effort to understand how the brain performs these tasks. They already can share five new insights:

	Learning consists of at least two distinct mental processes: learning about people, places, and things (explicit learning) and learning motor skills and perceptual strategies (implicit learning).
	The brain possesses an independent neural system to process each type of learning.
	Short-term learning occurs when the connection between two nerve cells grows stronger. This connection may be the place where memories are stored.
	Long-term memory goes hand-in-hand with the formation of new connections between nerve cells.
	Learning is reflected in anatomical alterations in widely distributed regions of the brain.

These insights suggest a new view of the relationship between social and biological processes in the brain's ability to generate behavior.

We have tended to think that biological and social determinants of behavior act on separate levels of the mind. Our new insights show that this distinction is unwarranted, because everyday events-sensory stimulation, experience, learning-can change the microarchitecture of the brain by altering the connections between nerve cells. The view that certain diseases affect thought and behavior by changing the biology of the brain while others do not is incorrect.
All mental processes are biological, and all illnesses that affect thought and behavior ultimately reflect some aspect of brain biology gone awry.

The insights gained during this Decade of the Brain have changed more than our concepts about mental and behavioral disorders. During the 18th century, the development of modern physics led to the Enlightenment, a period of intellectual revolution that spawned the idea of contemporary democracy. Today's intellectual revolution is driven by changes in our ability to communicate with one another. If we are entering a second Enlightenment, its underlying science could well be neuroscience, a prospect that bodes well as we increase our understanding of how the brain works to create ideas, to learn about one another, and to govern our interactions in society.

Major advances in bio-imaging technology combined with a new understanding of brain function gained from the human genome project are beginning to show scientists the way to begin solving the mysteries of central nervous system disorders. PMI believes that we are on our way to seeing the end of such devastating brain conditions as Alzheimer's disease and other conditions of premature neuronal death. The answers to why some people are able to age successfully into their tenth decade of life with full cognitive capabilities are on the horizon.

In the meantime, The Practical Memory Institute does its part by teaching both traditional and multimodal methods of memory improvement through its Memory Works® memory fitness programs based on science from NIH funded research and also goes beyond these methods to review a wide variety of methods not covered before. PMI brings to the public, though a Memory Monitor® found in all Memory Works CDs, the first comprehensive account of how a person's overall psychology can affect memory. In future programs, techniques for social interaction will be presented that give your memory a better chance at success. Also, PMI will present information on various devices that enhance memory or even perform memory tasks for you. Finally, instead of offering people a few general procedures to help memory, PMI will present a wide variety of information about ways to cope with literally hundreds of individual everyday memory tasks.