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What Is Memory?
Memory Center Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Memory is the faculty by which the brain encodes, stores, and retrieves
information. It is a record of experience that guides future action.

Memory encompasses the facts and experiential details that people consciously
call to mind as well as ingrained knowledge that surface without effort or even
awareness. It is both a short-term cache of information and the more permanent
What Is Memory? record of what one has learned. The types of memory described by scientists
Types of Memory include episodic memory, semantic memory, procedural memory, working
memory, sensory memory, and prospective memory.
How Memory Works

How to Improve Memory

Each kind of memory has distinct uses—from the vivid recollections of episodic
Memory and Mental Health memory to the functional know-how of procedural memory. Yet there are
Personal Memories and Nostalgia commonalities in how memory works overall, and key brain structures, such as
Memory Loss the hippocampus, that are integral to different kinds of memory.
Disorders of Memory
In addition to memory’s role in allowing people to understand, navigate, and
Extraordinary Memory Abilities
make predictions about the world, personal memories provide the foundation
for a rich sense of one’s self and one’s life—and give rise to experiences such as
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nostalgia.

To learn more, see Types of Memory, How Memory Works, and Personal
Memories and Nostalgia.

Forgetting and Problems With Memory

Memory loss is the unavoidable flipside of the human capacity to
remember. Forgetting, of course, is normal and happens every
day: The brain simply cannot retain a permanent record of
everything a person experiences and learns. And with advancing
age, some decline in memory ability is typical. There are strategies for coping
Memory Resources with such loss—adopting memory aids such as calendars and reminder notes,
for example, or routinizing the placement of objects at risk of getting lost.
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In more severe cases, however, memory can be permanently damaged by
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dementia and other disorders of memory. Dementia is a loss of cognitive
function that can have various underlying causes, the most prominent being
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Alzheimer’s disease. People with dementia experience a progressive loss of
function, such that memory loss may begin with minor forgetfulness (about
having recently shared a story, for example) and gradually progress to difficulty
Connected Topics with retaining new information, recognizing familiar individuals, and other
Dementia important memory functions. Professional assessment can help determine
whether an individual’s mild memory loss is a function of normal aging or a sign
Trauma
of a serious condition.
Aging
Memory disorders also include multiple types of amnesia that result not from
Mild Cognitive Impairment diseases such as Alzheimer’s, but from brain injury or other causes. People with
Nootropics amnesia lose the ability to recall past information, to retain new information, or
both. In some cases the memory loss is permanent, but there are also
False Memories
temporary forms of amnesia that resolve on their own.
Neurological Assessment
To learn more, see Memory Loss and Disorders of Memory.
Traumatic Brain Injury

Building Better Memory

Diagnosis
Though memory naturally declines with age, many people are
Alzheimer's Disease able to stay mentally sharp. How do they do it? Genes play a role,
but preventative measures including regular exercise, eating a
Delirium
healthy diet, and getting plenty of sleep—as well as keeping the
Dissociative Amnesia brain active and challenged—can help stave off memory loss.
Dissociative Fugue (Psychogenic
The science of memory also highlights ways anyone can improve their
Fugue)
memory, whether the goal is sharpening memory ability for the long term or just
passing exams this semester. Short-term memory tricks include mnemonic
devices (such as acronyms and categorization), spacing apart study time, and
Test Yourself
self-testing for the sake of recalling information. Sleep and exercise are other
Memory Test memory boosters.

Through committed practice with memory-enhancing techniques, some people

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train themselves to remember amazing quantities of information, such as
lengthy sequences of words or digits. For a small number of people, however,
extraordinary memory abilities come naturally. These gifted rememberers
include savants, for whom powerful memory coincides with some cognitive
disability or neurodevelopmental difference, as well as people with typical
intellects who remember exceptional quantities of details about their lives.

To learn more, see How to Improve Memory and Extraordinary Memory

Abilities.

Memory’s Role in Mental Health

Memory is a key element in certain mental health conditions:
Abnormal memory function can contribute to distress, or it can
coincide with an underlying disorder. Forgetfulness is associated
with depression; connections in memory, such as those involving
feared situations or drug-related cues, are an integral part of anxiety and
substance use disorders; and post-traumatic symptoms are entwined with the
memory of traumatic experiences.

In fact, experiences such as distressing memories and flashbacks are among

the core symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. For someone with PTSD, a
range of cues—including situations, people, or other stimuli related to a
traumatic experience in some way—can trigger highly distressing memories,
and the person may seek to avoid such reminders.
Find a Therapist
Get the help you need from a As a feature of various mental disorders, aberrant or biased memory function
therapist near you–a FREE service can also be a target for treatment. Treatments that involve exposure therapy, for
from Psychology Today.
example, are used to help patients reduce the power of trauma-related
memories through safe and guided encounters with those memories and stimuli
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associated with the trauma.

To learn more, see Memory and Mental Health.

Next: Types of Memory

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