Which Are the Types of Memory We Possess?

Brain researches show that we do not have a sole memory and reveal that there are actually various types of memory, differentiated and complementary.

The immediate memory lasts just miliseconds, and allows you to memorize rapidly things like a phone number or a name, for example. The working memory is a means of storing the information that is useful in a certain activity, like

the shopping list. The long-term memory makes it possible for a 100-year-old person to recall with all the details an episode in his/her childhood. The declarative memory means all the memories that can be recovered voluntary. The episodic history memory preserves all the happenings of the personal history.

The semantic culture memory represents what remains recorded in the brain after forgetting things following a learning process. This happens after an exam, for example. In the end, culture is what persists after we have forgotten it all.

The proceeding memory leads all the habits and automatic behaviors. For example, this allowed the Polish pianist Wladyslaw Spillzman (whose life was portrayed in the movie "The Pianist"), escaped from the Warsaw's ghetto, to remember without hesitations after 6 years the recording of a Chopin nocturne, interrupted by the German bombardments in 1939.

Of course, the base of the memory is formed by sensations, olfactive, visual, gustative, tactile and auditory. The sensations reach the brain's emotional center, the amygdala. In the amygdala, the brain decides in a question of seconds the faith of the sensory information. Now the autobiographic and emotional meaning of a sensation is decided.

The right half of the brain cortex stores the biographic memory, emotional recalls, autobiographic and time-related memories, like the first day of the high school or the 9/11 attack. The right half of the brain cortex stores the cognitive and factual memories (like Paris is the France's capital, words, numbers and so on). The cerebellum stores the memory involving movement, like playing guitar or swimming.

The centers for positive recollections were detected in the center of the brain's cortex, while the center of the negative recollections is at the edge of the cortex.