The most famous memory-impaired person ever studied, Henry Molaison (referred to as вЂњHMвЂќ in the medical literature) had a part of his brain called the hippocampi surgically removed to try and alleviate the devastating epilepsy he suffered from. You wonвЂ™t recall this for any longer than you need to.

They can last for just seconds: youвЂ™re in a lift, for example, and remember that youвЂ™ve already hit the button to go to the floor you need. Real short-term memory is literally what you can hold onto in your consciousness. This difficulty is actually to do with the information not having been stored very efficiently in long-term memory, resulting in rapid forgetting. When people complain of having terrible short-term memory, they are usually referring to not being able to hold onto information for more than a couple of weeks. It involves experiencing the current moment through the five senses, holding that experience for a fraction of a second, filtering just a proportion of this through to the next stage, consciously holding this information for perhaps 90 seconds, and then either losing the experience or somehow successfully making enough of an impression in the mind that it can be evoked at a later time. The reason is partly because memory is one of the most complex mental abilities. Short-term memory, long-term memory, amnesia, dementia, AlzheimerвЂ™s вЂ“ people often use these terms incorrectly. While we break between terms, here is a post by Ashok, originally published in The Conversation. Ashok Jansari is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, researchingВ cognitive neuropsychology, particularly memory/amesia, face recognition and assessment of executive functions.

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