Brief Review on the Memory Types and their Location and Function

Memory is an important part of brain function which can be affected by various pathologies. Studying about memory is important in both basic and clinical science. This is a brief review on the memory types and their location and function.

Keywords: Memory types; Anatomical location; Function

Memory can be classified into declarative/explicit and nondeclarative/implicit. Declarative/explicit memory can be divided into semantic, episodic and short-term/working memory while nondeclarative/implicit memory can be divided into procedural, conditioning and motor skills/memory [1-3]. Semantic memory is located in parahippocampal gyrus and its function would be world facts remembering. Episodic memory is located in the hippocampus and its function includes the life episodes and events related memory. Short-term/working memory is located in the prefrontal cortex and its function would be information retention for ongoing behavior guidance.
Procedural memory which is located in the striatum will function for tasks remembering and behavioral habits formation. Conditioning memory is anatomically distributed and its function would be associating a stimulus which evokes a response which would be reasonable from a second stimulus. Motor skills/memory which its learning location would be the cerebellum and its storage would happen in the cerebellum and the other part of the brain which is not clearly known maybe in the cortex would function as the motor skills learned memory [4-6].

It is important for the clinicians to have knowledge about various types of memory and their anatomical location and function so that it can be possible to approach the patients suffering from memory problems better during clinical practice. Also having such knowledge would help to work on basic research studies in the field of memory and related pathologies [7,8].

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