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Learning and Memory Essays

Decent Essays

xxLEARNING AND MEMORY

Learning is the process of gaining knowledge or skills through study, experience or teaching. It is a process that depends on experience and leads to long-term changes in the possible behaviour of an individual in a given situation, in order to achieve a goal.

Memory is a property of the human mind. It describes the ability to retain information. There are different types of classifications for memory based on duration, nature and retrieval of items.

The generally accepted classification of memory is based on how long you can remember an item or experience (memory retention), and identifies three types of memory: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory

The sensory memory corresponds …show more content…

It forms a part of the limbic system and plays a part in memory and navigation. The name derives from its curved shape, which supposedly resembles that of a seahorse.

Doctors and scientists dispute the exact role of the hippocampus, but agree that it has an essential role in the formation of new memories about personally experienced events. Some researchers prefer to consider the hippocampus as part of a larger medial temporal lobe memory system responsible for declarative memory. When a long-term, declarative memory is made, certain neuronal connections in the temporal lobe are strengthened, and others are weakened. These changes are fairly permanent, however some may take weeks or months before they are complete
Skill memory or procedural memory however, is processed in the cerebellum and then the information is passed the basal ganglia which store memories of this type and are also responsible for co-ordination and refining movement

. Diagram of parts of the human brain

Diagram showing the location of
Hippocampus in the temporal lobe

The first process of memory is attention. There is much more information around you than you can process at any one time. Thus, you must make choices (conscious and unconscious) regarding the information you will remember. Once information is acknowledged, it needs to be encoded in order to be remembered. Encoding refers to translating incoming information into a trigger

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