MEMORY PROCESSING

Memory Processing

Memory Processing

Outsiders viewpoint is a general distinction can be made between short-term memory that relies on sustained neural activity and long-term memory that depends on structural changes in the brain. Within short-term memory, a further distinction can be made between an active maintenance of neural activity and a passive persistence of activity (Cohen 2001) (Cohen 2001). The passive and fleeting visual and auditory after-images of the present, usually referred to as sensory memory, are likely supported by the same sensory cortices that initially participated in the perception of the stimuli. Working memory, the ability to actively maintain information in consciousness through rehearsal or elaboration, depends heavily on the prefrontal cortex and on other, posterior cortical areas. Both working memory and sensory memory are thought to be available to consciousness.

Insider viewpoint suggested that the semantic memory refers to one's general knowledge base, such as that an apple is a fruit or a hammer is a tool. Whereas episodic memories are linked to particular events in time, semantic memories appear to have been abstracted away from the particular episodes that led to their formation. For example, many people know state capitals, but few remember the act of learning them (Eichenbaum 2004 ,p. 32). The relation of general knowledge to specific experiences remains a controversial topic, because it is not always easy to make the distinction between semantic and episodic memory.

Long-term memory, memory that outlasts the capacity of either sensory memory or working memory and depends on structural changes relating to synaptic plasticity and membrane excitability, can be divided into a number of brain systems. Most memory systems of the brain support examples of memory that occur outside the scope of consciousness, such as classical conditioning of reflexive motor responses, cognitive skill learning, perceptual learning, motor skill learning, habit learning, and priming. The capacity for conscious recollection is supported by a network of structures that includes the hippocampus and adjacent cortical areas. This network of structures is the only memory system in which stored information can be subsequently brought back to mind. In other systems, memory is expressed through a variety of behaviours other than explicit report.

Insider viewpoint Insider viewpoint effort in this direction has been provided with much of its momentum by research with experimental animals. The difficulty of assessing consciousness in experimental animals (see entries under animal consciousness) has necessitated that researchers look to other memory functions supported by the hippocampal memory system that are common to animals and humans. This approach has had several benefits for the understanding of conscious recollection in humans. First, much greater neurobiological detail and experimental control is available in work with experimental animals. Second, the findings with experimental animals are very much relevant to human memory due to the strong evolutionary conservation of the hippocampal memory system (Manns and Eichenbaum 2006). Third, the push to identify the conserved and fundamental operating characteristics of hippocampus-dependent memory has offered insights towards a deconstruction of the phenomenon of conscious ...