Human Memory with Recent Developments: A Small Review

Human Memory, types and classification:

In psychology, memory is an organism's mental ability to store, retain and recall information. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing the memory. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century put memory within the paradigms of cognitive psychology. In recent decades, it has become one of the principal pillars of a branch of science called cognitive neuroscience, an interdisciplinary link between cognitive psychology and neuroscience.
There are several ways to classify memories, based on duration, nature and retrieval of information. From an information processing perspective there are three main stages in the formation and retrieval of memory:[…]

Encoding or registration (receiving, processing and combining of received information)
Storage (creation of a permanent record of the encoded information)
Retrieval or recall (calling back the stored information in response to some cue for use in a process or activity)

A basic and generally accepted classification of memory is based on the duration of memory retention, and identifies three distinct types of memory: sensory memory, short term memory and long term memory. […]


Recent Interesting studies on Human Memory :

• Why We Remember Important Things And Forget Trivia: Neuron's Synapses Remodel Themselves:Where would we be without our ability to remember important information or, for that matter, to forget irrelevant details? Thanks to the flexibility of the nerve cell's communication units, called synapses, we are good at both. Up to now, only the receiving side of a synapse was believed to play an active role in this reorganization of the brain, which is thought to underlie our ability to learn but also to forget. An incorrect assumption, as scientists can now show.[1]
• Occasional Memory Loss Tied To Lower Brain Volume: People who occasionally forget an appointment or a friend's name may have a loss of brain volume, even though they don't have memory deficits on regular tests of memory or dementia, according to new study.[2]
• Major Step Forward In Understanding How Memory Works: By blocking certain mechanisms that control the way that nerve cells in the brain communicate, scientists have been able to prevent visual recognition memory in rats. This demonstrates they have identified cellular and molecular mechanisms in the brain that may provide a key to understanding processes of recognition memory.[3]
• Memory Function Varies After Damage To Key Area Of The Brain: Scientists have discovered dramatic differences in the memory performance of patients with damage to the hippocampus, an area of the human brain key to memory.[4]
• Aging Impairs The 'Replay' Of Memories During Sleep: Aging impairs the consolidation of memories during sleep, a process important in converting new memories into long-term ones, according to new animal research in the July 30 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. The findings shed light on normal memory mechanisms and how they are disrupted by aging.[5]
• Memory Loss Linked To Poor Diet, Study Suggests: Loss of memory with advanced age is a significant problem within most societies, and appears particularly severe in advanced industrialized nations. A less visible and often ignored problem comes from a food supply high in cholesterol and saturated fat, which has led to high obesity rates particularly in the United States.[6]