This document provides an overview of human memory, including its structure and processes. It discusses the different types of memory like sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Long-term memory is divided into explicit and implicit memory. Explicit memory includes episodic memory for personal experiences and semantic memory for facts. The three main processes involved in memory are encoding, storage, and retrieval. The hippocampus, amygdala and cerebral cortex play important roles in memory and processing information in the brain. Forgetting can occur due to failure of retrieval or interference. Various techniques like rehearsal, organization, and mnemonics can help improve memory.

1. Memory
Yogendra Goyal
UG2010 11045

2. Content:
 Introduction
 Memory Structure
 Information Processing Model
 Memory Process
 Memory and brain
 Retrieval and Forgetting
 Improving memory

3. Introduction
It is an organism’s ability to store, retain and recall
information and experiences
It is a set of three different and subsequent
processes: Encoding, Storage and Retrieval of
information and past experiences in human brain

4. Structure of Memory
Sensory
Memory
Episodic
Short Term Memory
Memory Explicit
Semantic
Long Term Memory
Memory
Procedural
Implicit
memory

5. Sensory Memory
 Information typically enters the sensory register
 Capacity of retention is very less (< 1 sec.)
 Forgetting takes place very rapidly
 It refers to items detected by the sensory receptors which are
retained temporarily in the sensory registers and which have a
large capacity for unprocessed information but are not able to hold
the information for a time span.
 Two types of sensory memory
• Iconic Memory (Visual)
• Echoic memory (Auditory)

6. Short Term Memory
 Short term memory is also known as active memory
 Information comes from paying attention on sensory memories
 Forgetting take place in15-30 sec.
 Miller’s magical number (7+-2) tells us that short term memory can
only store around 5-9 items.
 Recalling from short term memory is affected by serial position
effect and interferences.

7. Long Term Memory
 The vast storehouse of information
 Information can become lost but not destroyed or deleted
 Despite our everyday impressions of forgetting, it seems likely that
long-term memory actually decays very little over time, and can
store a unlimited amount of information for a very long time
 By the process of association and rehearsal, the content of short term
memory can be transferred to long-term memory
 It is divided into two parts: Explicit and Implicit Memory

8. Explicit and Implicit Memory
 Explicit stand for the memory of consciousness. When we try to
intentionally remember something, this information is stored in our
explicit memory.
 This type of memory is also known as declarative memory, since we
can consciously recall and explain the information.
 It’s about “knowing what” or memory of facts and events.
 It is further divided into two parts: Episodic and Semantic Memory
 Episodic memory represents our memory of experiences and specific
events in time in a serial form, from which we can reconstruct the
actual events that took place at any given point in our lives.

9. Continued…
 Episodic is the memory of autobiographical events that can be
explicitly stated.
 Semantic memory is more structured record of facts ,meanings,
concepts and knowledge about the external world that we have
acquired. It refers to general factual knowledge.
 Much of semantic memory is abstract and relational and is
associated with the meaning of verbal symbol.
 Implicit memory is the unconscious memory of skills and how to
do things, particularly the use of objects or movements of the body.
 It’s called procedural memory because all daily work are done by a
process which we don’t have to remember.

10. Information Processing Model
By Atkinson Shiffrin (1968)
Information attended to and retained for some time is
sensory register, is processed for some more time is short
term memory, processed further is long term memory

11. Memory Process
 Human memory, like memory in a computer, allows us to store
information for later use. In order to do this, however, both the
computer and we need to three basic processes involved in memory.
1. Encoding
2. Storage
3. Retrieval
 Encoding the process we use to transform information so that it can be
stores.
 Storage means holding onto the information that is done in long term
memory.
 Retrieval is about bringing the memory out of storage and reversing
the process of encoding. In other words, return the information to a
form similar to what we stored.

12. Memory and Brain
 The hippocampus, a primitive structure deep in the brain, plays the
single largest role in processing information as memory.
 The amygdala, an almond-shaped area near the hippocampus, processes
emotion and helps imprint memories that involve emotion.
 The cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the brain,
stores most long-term memory in different zones,
depending on what kind of processing the
information involves: language,
sensory input, problem-solving, and so forth.

13. Retrieval and Forgetting
 Retrieval includes revisiting the neural pathways.
 Retrieving power decays as the time pass out (of learning)
 Forgetting can result from failure to retrieve information from long
term memory
 There might be interference (proactive or retroactive) which cause a
bad retrieval
 In proactive old memories interfere with the new one while in
retroactive new memories interfere with old one.
 The information might not be store in LTM at all

14. Continued…
 Forgetting refers to apparent loss of information already encoded
and stored in long term memory. It is a spontaneous or gradual
process in which old memories are unable to be recalled from
memory storage
 Due to forgetting some disorder are occurred like Amnesia, Infantile
Amnesia.
 Hippocampus play an important role in information processing. But
it’s activity decreases as age increases. So forgetting occur more in
old people case.

15. Improving Memory
 There are some ways by which we can improve our memory
capacity or recalling power:
 Rehearsal: Reviewing information mentally (silently)
 Organization: Organizing difficult items into chunks; a type of
reordering
 Spaced Practice: Alternating study sessions with brief rest periods
 Part Learning: Studying subparts of a larger body of information
(like text chapters)

16. Continued…
Mnemonics: Memory “tricks”; any kind of memory system or aid
- Using mental pictures
- Making things meaningful
- Making information familiar
- Forming bizarre, unusual or exaggerated mental
associations
 Finally a good sleep and healthy food help improving memory.

17. Thank You!!!