A-Z of Memory

Introduction

A)

Absent-minded â" being forgetful, often from a failure to pay attention to oneâs actions

Adaptive memory â" that our learning and memory skills are tuned to solving fitness-based problems, reflecting how our memory evolved

Aging â" the impact of time on an organism once maturity is reached

Alcohol â" a chemical (ethanol) with psychoactive effects that is globally used as a recreational drug

Alzheimer's disease (AD) â" the commonest form of dementia characterised by the presence of brain atrophy, amyloid plaques, and neurofibrillary tangles, along with pronounced cognitive decline

Amnesia â" the loss of memory despite the sparing of other cognitive abilities

Amygdala â" a limbic brain structure in the anterior part of the medial temporal lobes

Anaesthetics â" see Unconscious learning

Anterograde amnesia â" the failure to encode, consolidate, or retrieve new information that would normally reside in explicit long-term memory

Associative learning â" the ability of organisms to make connections between related events in their environment

Autobiographical memory â" individual personal episodes along with more general life information that concerns the same individual

Autonoesis â" see Episodic memory, Remember

Availability heuristic â" see Heuristics

B)

Bartlett â" on the contributions of Sir Frederick Bartlett (1886-1969)

Bias â" how our memories are shaped by learnt expectations and prejudices

Binding â" the bringing together of different elements in space and time to create a cohesive entity, be it a sensory percept or a mnemonic representation

Blocking â" 1) The ability of a previously acquired association to block further associative learning about the same contingency, 2) The ability of an initial (incorrect) recalled item to block the recall of other potential solutions

Bottom-up processing â" see Top-down processing

C)

Caffeine â" a widely used stimulant with some positive effects on cognition (see also Nootropics)

Central executive â" a core component of working memory that helps to regulate attention, make decisions, and guide the brief holding of information

Change blindness â" see Illusions of memory

Childhood amnesia (also called Infantile amnesia) â" the inability to recall or recognise personal events from our earliest years

Classical conditioning â"the associative learning of how one stimulus predicts another

Cognitive control â" see Executive functions

Cognitive enhancers â" see Nootropics

Comprehension and learning â" see Understanding and learning

Concept learning â" see Grandmother cells, Hub and Spoke model, Semantic memory

Conditioned taste aversion â" the long-lasting, deep dislike of a taste that had been associated with feeling nauseous

Confabulation â" the fabrication of narratives and other information, often to fill in memory gaps

Confirmation bias â" see Bias

Consolidation â" the progressive stabilization of information post encoding

Constructivism in memory â" the belief that memories reflect our personal understanding of an event, rather than an objective representation

Context and memory â" how the same contextual cues at learning and recall can benefit retrieval while changed contextual cues can disrupt retrieval

Cross-sectional study â" see Longitudinal study

Curiosity â" an intrinsic motivation to seek novel information and so reduce uncertainty

D)

Declarative memory â" explicit long-term memory that incorporates both semantic and episodic memory

Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm (DRM) â" using related words or images to create false memories of a never-presented, but closely related item

Default mode network â" the network of brain areas that increases coordinated activity in between tasks, typically when self-reflecting or mind wandering

Demand characteristics â" the array of cues that convey an experimental hypothesis to the participant

Dementia â" an umbrella term that covers numerous neurological conditions that progressively disrupt brain function and cause the breakdown of multiple cognitive functions

Depression and memory â" the impact of major depression on memory

Depth of processing â" see Levels of processing

Developmental amnesia â" a syndrome of memory loss and memory preservation seen after bilateral hippocampal damage in childhood

Diencephalon â" a core brain area largely consisting of the thalamus, subthalamus, and hypothalamus

Digit span â" see Memory span

Dissociative amnesia â" see Psychogenic amnesia

Distributed practice â" see Spaced training

Directed forgetting â" see Motivated forgetting

E)

Ebbinghaus â" Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) is principally famous for his systematic studies of rates of learning and rates of forgetting

Echoic memory â" the brief sensory store for auditory information, including words

Ecological validity â" a term typically used when considering how well a set of experimental findings can be generalized to real-world settings

Ecphory â" when a cue helps trigger the memory of a past event

Eidetic memory â" an unusually vivid form of visual memory that is highly accurate

Elaborative rehearsal â" the process of considering the meaning of a stimulus and its implications, processes that create additional connections and enhance recall

Embodied cognition â" the notion that the way we think is shaped by our bodily perceptions and experiences

Emotion and memory â" the interplay between affect and the elements of memory

Encoding specificity principle â" see Context-dependent memory and Ecphory

Engram â" the enduring trace that records a memory and is potentially available for retrieval

Epigenetics â" how cellular experiences may modify gene expression without altering the underlying (DNA) genetic code

Episodic buffer â" a subsystem within working memory that provides a two-way bridge with episodic memory and other aspects of long-term memory

Episodic foresight (Episodic future thinking) â" see Future memory

Episodic memory â" our long-term memory for individual events located in a particular time and place (an episode)

Errorless learning â" a method of teaching in which people are prevented as far as possible from making errors whilst learning a new skill or new information

Event segmentation â" how a continuous stream of activity is broken down into meaningful units

Executive functions â" an umbrella term for a set of related cognitive skills that help planning, problem solving, and adapting to new situations

Expert knowledge â" the superior ability to acquire and retain new information within oneâs domain of expertise

Explicit (declarative) memory â" the division of long-term memory that holds information over which we have conscious access and awareness

Extinction â" the reduction in frequency or intensity of a conditioned response following the removal of reinforcement

Eyewitness memory â" the study of how and when the remembrance of witnessed events may differ from reality

F)

False memory (syndrome) â" personal narratives for events that never occurred

Familiarity principle â" see Mere-exposure effect

Fear conditioning â" learning in which a stimulus or context becomes associated with fear

Feeling of knowing â" a sense of familiarity indicating the presence of a memory that cannot be fully retrieved

Flashbulb memory â" a vivid, detailed memory of a surprising, emotional event that often includes what the observer was doing when the event occurred

Forgetting â" the absence or error in a memory, whether by inadequate encoding, alteration, erasure, or retrieval failure

Forgetting curve â" the decline in memory over time

Free recall â" the recollection of information as it comes to mind without explicit cues or prompts

Fugue â" a temporary loss of personal identity that appears unaccompanied by physical brain damage

Future memory (episodic future thinking) â" our ability to imagine or simulate future autobiographical events

Fuzzy trace theory â" see Gist

G)

Generation Effect â" how self-generated information is remembered better than information that you have read or heard

Gist â" that some memories only capture the essence of an experience, its gist

Grandmother cell â" a neuron that only responds to a highly specific, complex stimulus (such as oneâs grandmother)

Grid cells â" spatial neurons whose firing fields are organized in a horizontal lattice that covers the environment, with each firing field being equally spaced (forming a grid)

H)

Habit â" a behaviour that can be performed without conscious control or a behaviour that is gradually acquired over many repetitive trials

Habituation â" the gradual lessening of a reaction to a stimulus after the repeated presentation of the same or similar stimulus

Head-direction cells â" neurons that selectively fire when facing a particular direction (âthe brainâs compassâ)

Hebb â" Donald O. Hebb (1904-1985), a Canadian psychologist best known for his pioneering work on neural networks and learning

Heuristic â" a cognitive shortcut (rule-of-thumb) that aids rapid decision making

Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) (also known as Hyperthymesia) â" the ability to retain past autobiographical memories at exceptional levels of detail

Hippocampal formation (Hippocampus) â" a medial temporal lobe structure that critically contributes to a range of memory functions, including those required for episodic memory and spatial navigation

Hippocampal replay â" see Memory replay

H.M. â" Henry Molaison (1926-2008) is the best-known and most studied case of amnesia

Homunculus â" i) the seductive fallacy of a little human solving problems inside our head, ii) the outline of a human body across our motor and somatosensory cortices

Hub and Spoke model of semantic memory â" a model of how we represent semantic information

Hyperthymesia â" see Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory

Hypnosis and memory â" on whether hypnosis can aid the retrieval of memories or disrupt aspects of memory

I)

Iconic memory â" a brief visual store thought to combine two forms of visual persistence

Illusions of memory â" when our recall or recognition of a past event markedly deviates from the real experience

Imagery and memory â" how a mental pictorial representation impacts on memory

Imagination inflation (see also False memories) â" how imagining events that did not occur increases the likelihood of believing in their reality

Imitation (Imitative learning) â" social learning that involves copying the actions of others

Implicit memory (Nondeclarative memory) â" that component of long-term memory which is not consciously accessible

Imprinting â" whereby an animal learns, during a sensitive period, to confine its preferences to a specific stimulus (typically another individual), class of stimuli, or location

Inattentional blindness â" see Illusions of memory

Incidental learning â" learning that occurs without the explicit intention to learn and memorise

Infantile amnesia â" See Childhood amnesia

Instrumental learning (Operant conditioning) â" associative learning in which the likelihood or intensity of a response is regulated by its outcome

Interference â" competition between similar information that can cause memory errors

Irrelevant speech (sound) effect â" how background speech or word-like sounds can disrupt ongoing memory tasks and comprehension

Isolation effect â" see von Restorff effect

J)

Jostâs law â" see Ebbinghaus, Ribotâs law

K)

Korsakoffâs disease (syndrome) â" a form of organic amnesia associated with vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficiency, and most often seen in chronic alcoholics

L)

Latent inhibition â" when a familiar stimulus takes longer to acquire a new association than a novel stimulus

Learning â" at its simplest, learning is commonly defined as behavioral change brought about by experience

Learning-set â" learning to learn, so that previous similar problems lead to the acquisition of a rule (learning-set) to help solve the same class of problems

Learning styles â" a teaching vogue which presumes that students learn better when receiving information in their preferred medium (style), e.g., auditory, visual, or kinaesthetic

Levels of processing â" the concept that the deeper you process information the better it is subsequently remembered

Lloyd-Morganâs canon â" see Instrumental learning

Longitudinal study â" repeatedly testing the performance of the same individual over time

Long-term memory â" a repository of stored information that persists for minutes, days, or even years (sometimes referred to as secondary memory)

Long-term depression (LTD) â" although the term can refer to a chronic depressive disorder, here it concerns a process that weakens connections between neurons, often acting in the opposite way to long-term potentiation (LTP)

Long-term potentiation (LTP) â" the lasting strengthening of synaptic efficacy following pulses of stimulation

M)

Maintenance rehearsal â" see Elaborative rehearsal

Mammillary bodies â" see Diencephalon, Korsakoffâs syndrome

Massed learning â" see Spaced learning

Memory â" the meaning of memory

Memory in sensitive plants and unicellular organisms, including slime moulds â" on whether memory exists in organisms that lack neurons

Memory replay â" the reactivation of sequential activity patterns in neuronal assemblies that replays their prior patterns of activity during learning

Memory span â" a test of short-term memory in which a series of items are recalled in their order of presentation

Mental time travel â" see Future memory (Future episodic memory)

Mere-exposure effect â" how, after repeated exposure, a neutral stimulus acquires positive values

Metamemory â" the introspective ability to monitor your own memory processes, including its content and capabilities

Method of loci â" A memory aid (mnemonic) that involves making visual images of items to be remembered, and placing these images in a pre-set sequence of visualised locations

Mild cognitive impairment â" a condition causing memory or other thinking problems that is often, but not always, a transitional phase leading to dementia

Mirror neuron â" a neuron that increases its activity when performing an action and when observing that same action

Mnemonics â" effortful cognitive strategies used to improve memory

Mnemonists â" individuals who possess exceptional memory abilities, whether seemingly spontaneously or by dint of exhaustive training

Mood congruency â" see Context-dependent memory

Motivated forgetting â" an effortful process that helps us to forget unwanted memories

Motor learning â" see Procedural learning

Multiple trace theory (of consolidation and retrieval) â" that each retrieval effort creates a new memory trace, as a result of which the hippocampus remains necessary for the consolidation and retrieval of past episodic memories, irrespective of their age

N)

n-back task â" where participants mentally hold a continuous sequence of items while checking for any repeats from a specified number of places (n) back in the sequence

Neurogenesis â" the creation of new neurons

Nicotine â" an addictive drug that activates one of the two major types of acetylcholine receptors (nicotinic) and is thought to influence cognition

Nondeclarative memory â" see Implicit memory

Nootropics (âCognitive enhancersâ, âNeuroenhancersâ, âSmart drugsâ) â" chemicals and supplements purported to improve cognition, including learning and memory

O)

Observational learning â" social learning based on imitation that makes it possible to acquire new behaviours and knowledge

Olfactory memory â" memory for smells

Operant learning â" see Instrumental learning

P)

Partial reinforcement extinction effect â" see Extinction

Partial report method â" see Iconic memory, Echoic memory

Pattern completion and Pattern separation â" âPattern completionâ is the process of retrieving a complete memory representation from a partial or degraded cue; âPattern separationâ is the process of segregating similar experiences into distinct, dissimilar representations

Pavlovian conditioning â" see Classical conditioning

Penfield (Wilder Penfield, 1891-1976) â" see Engram

Perceptual learning â" see Expert knowledge

Phenotype â" the observable attributes displayed by an individual

Phonological loop â" a working memory subsystem for speech-based sounds

Place cells â" neurons that signal a specific location by increasing their activity

Prediction error â" the mismatch between a prior expectation and the experienced event

Preverbal learning â" that period of learning by infants prior to verbal communication, typified by other communication skills such as vocalizations, gestures, and eye contact

Primacy effect â" the superior recall of the first few items in a sequence

Primary memory â" see Short-term memory

Priming â" when exposure to a stimulus (now âprimedâ) influences our response to a subsequent stimulus

Proactive interference â" see Interference

Procedural memory â" the implicit memory for skills, habits, and cognitive actions that are performed automatically and for which we lack conscious awareness of their underlying nature

Prospective memory â" the cognitive ability to remember to perform an intended action or recall a planned intention at an appropriate future time

Psychogenic amnesia (or Dissociative amnesia) â" a memory dysfunction, typically involving a loss of personal memories, which arises from psychological stress or trauma yet without detectable brain damage (or damage that could account for the degree of memory loss)

Q)

Qualia â" the subjective conscious experience of a quality or property

R)

Reality monitoring â" see Source monitoring

Recall â" see Remember

Recency effect â" the superior recall of information presented at the end of a list over those items presented in the middle

Recognition memory â" the ability to detect the re-occurrence of a stimulus

Reconsolidation (and Reconstruction) â" the process whereby the retrieval of a memory renders it unstable and prone to modification

Recovered memories â" see Repression of memory

Rehearsal â" the mental repetition of an item to prolong its storage

Reinforcement and Reward â" terms describing how pleasant or unpleasant stimuli can influence the likelihood of a preceding action

Remember (Recall, Retrieve) â" to access a memory (or past representation)

Remember/Know â" see Recognition memory

Replication crisis (Reproducibility crisis) â" a methodological crisis concerning how many published findings (e.g., in psychology) are difficult or seemingly impossible to reproduce

Repression (memory) â" the self-removal of a traumatic memory that cannot be accommodated in conscious memory

Retrieval â" see Remember

Retrieval effect (Retrieval practice effect) â" see Testing effect

Retroactive interference â" see Interference

Retrograde amnesia â" the sudden loss of past memories, typically following a neurological insult

Ribotâs law (1881) â" that in retrograde amnesia, recent memories are more likely to be lost than older memories

S)

Savants â" people who display spectacular feats of memory, the term âsavant syndromeâ being largely reserved for those who also face neurodevelopmental challenges

Savings â" using rates of relearning to assess original levels of learning and retention

Schema â" an acquired mental framework that guides the interpretation, organization, and recollection of incoming information

Scripts â" see Schemas

Semantic dementia â" a subtype of frontotemporal dementia that predominantly affects language skills, in particular, word comprehension and naming

Semantic memory â" a division of explicit long-term memory that holds general knowledge about the world, including facts, concepts, words, and number meanings

Sensitization â" when the repeated exposure to a stimulus results in an amplification of responsiveness to that stimulus, and potentially to other stimuli

Sensory memory â" see Echoic memory, Iconic memory

Serial position effect â" see Primacy effect, Recency effect

Short-term memory â" a store holding restricted amounts of information over short time periods

Smart drugs â" see Nootropics

Source monitoring â" the cognitive ability to identify the origin of a memory

Spaced training (Spaced learning) â" how distributed practice results in more effective learning and more durable retention

State-dependent learning (State-dependency) â" see Context and memory

Superstitious learning â" the mistaken learning that occurs when an action is coincidentally paired with a reinforcer

Synaptic plasticity â" see Long-term depression and Long-term potentiation

T)

Taxi drivers (London) â" insights into brain plasticity and spatial learning made possible by the unique training demands on London taxi drivers

Testing effect â" how taking tests during the learning phase facilitates later retrieval from long-term memory

Tip-of-the-tongue (tip-of-the-finger, tip-of-the-eye) â" the feeling that you are on the brink of recollecting a word, but the correct word will not come to mind

Tobacco smoking â" see Nicotine

Top-down processing (also Bottom-up processing) â" how our prior knowledge and expectations influence perceptual and cognitive decisions

Trace decay â" that memories get weaker over time, with time being the critical agent of forgetting

Transient global amnesia â" an anterograde amnesia of sudden origin and brief duration that selectively affects the ability to make or access new memories while sparing other cognitive abilities

U)

Unconscious learning when anaesthetised â" evidence that new implicit learning is possible despite being unconscious

Understanding and memory â" the relationship between depth of understanding and subsequent memory (also see Constructivism, Elaborative rehearsal, Expert knowledge, Levels of processing, Mnemonics, Schemas)

V)

Visuospatial sketchpad â" a subsystem within the multicomponent model of working memory that holds visual and spatial information

von Restorff effect (Isolation effect) â" the enhanced memorability of an item that stands-out from the array by being different or unexpected

W)

White matter plasticity â" how experience-induced changes to white matter accompany learning

Wisconsin Card Sorting Test â" see Learning-set

Working memory â" a cognitive system with limited capacity and temporary duration that actively holds information making it available for reasoning, decision-making, and planning (a more restricted definition applies to animal working memory)

Y)

Yerkes-Dodson law â" see Emotion and memory

Z)

Zebra fish â" a model vertebrate species that has optically transparent embryonic and young larval stages

Zeigarnik effect â" that uncompleted or interrupted tasks are remembered better

Acknowledgements