Memory Part 1: Overview

The everyday experience of different aspects of memory. Adapted with permission from Breedlove SM, Watson NV, Rosenzweig MR. Biological Psychology: An Introduction to Behavioral, Cognitive, and Clinical Neuroscience. 6th ed. Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates; 2010.

Memory consolidation. Connections between the hippocampus and various cortical modules are critical in early memory formation (left). Over time, the cortical modules form connections among themselves and the connections with the hippocampus become less important (center). When the memory is fully consolidated, only the cortical to cortical connections are important and the hippocampus becomes unnecessary (right). Adapted with permission from Frankland PW, Bontempi B. The organization of recent and remote memories. Nat Rev Neurosci 2005;6:119–30.

Retrieval of nonconsolidated and consolidated memory. A, An event with audio (A), spatial (S), and visual (V) information is encoded. The hippocampus contains a unified representation of the event and forms connections with the relevant cortical areas to process the audio, spatial, and visual information. B, When a retrieval cue containing only spatial and visual information of the event is encountered early in the memory formation process before the memory has been consolidated, the hippocampus plays a critical role by accessing its connections with the pertinent cortical areas for the entire memory. C, After the memory is fully consolidated, the connections with the hippocampus become unnecessary and the retrieval cue accesses the memory directly from the cortical to cortical network of connections that form the unified representation of the memory. Adapted with permission from Purves D, Cabeza R, Huettel SA, et al. Principles of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2nd ed. Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates; 2013.