Structures of memory

• Short-term memory (stm): aka ‘working memory’

  • has a limited duration - only lasts around 30 seconds
  • has a limited capacity - can hold around 7 pieces of information
• Long-term memory (ltm): Stores information for a long time.

  • well understood and practiced memories will be permanent
  • stores and unlimited amount of information
• Episodic memory: Memory for life events
• Semantic memory: memory for facts
• Procedural memory: memory for skills
• Amnesia: loss of memory for events

  • can be caused by damage to the brain or head
• Interference: mixing up two similar events or pieces of information

  • can lead to information being forgotten
• Memories can be forgotten due to time
• Memories can be triggered by a cue
• The frontal lobe is essential for stm and for related cognitive processes
• The hippocampus is involved in the formation of new semantic and episodic long-term memories
• Henry Molaison

  • had his hippocampus removed during surgery
  • his stm was un affected but he was unable to form new semantic and episodic long term memories
  • HM was still able to form new procedural memories, showing that these are processes by different structures of the brain