Did you know that the outline or the border of your lips (called the vermillion border) is a special feature of humans only? This transition line from your skin to the pinkish-red part of your lips is found only in humans—no one knows why.

The lips appear red because of the underlying blood vessels. Arteries are blood vessels that carry blood back to the heart. The arteries and veins are connected through a series of blood vessels called the capillaries.

These red-colored blood filled capillaries are close to the thin skin on your lips, so your lips appear red.

How Does the Brain Memorize Information?

Memory is an associative brain function, meaning a function in which one object is associated with another by a relationship. Everything we experience is stored in the brain subconsciously, but storing information is not the problem that most of us have, retaining it, in a way that we can recall it is. The more association one has with a memory or experience the easier it is to retrieve.

The brain stores information and experiences like a computer, first it encodes the information, that it stores it in a place for retrieval at a later time. But just as a computer needs its brain defrag, meaning to bring like, and associated things together, so does the human brain.

Naturally the brain stores information based on association. In the short term memory things are based on the current experience and our senses. What we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. If this information is used once and never recalled again, it is discarded, like a phone number we just got from 411. If this information is recalled frequently it is than processed into the long-term memory.

Information in the short term memory only last a few seconds and decays to make room for new information. So I guess it may be safe to say that short-term memory is not for memory at all, but simply information. Information we are currently experiencing, long enough to experience the moment.

But if there is an association to that information based on a previous experience that information is than placed in the long-term memory right along with that previous experience. If it is a new memory, it will be easier to recall it once it is recalled a few times, which creates new information to be stores with this new long term memory.