Long-term Memory

Long-term memory is designed to store information for long periods of time. It may be until the end of a quarter or semester or the entire school year until you can get through the tests, or in some cases for as long as the brain is alive. The hippocampus, your brain’s “browser” plays a role in storing the information as well as attempting to retrieve the stored information upon request. The transfer process appears to make actual physical changes to neurons and their connections. Recent studies are suggesting that long-term memories are stored diffusely in the synapses, the space between neurons. When you want to pull up a long-term memory, the hippocampus gets busy collecting or retrieving the bits that constitute the memory. The process helps to explain how sometimes part of the memory may be missing. When this occurs, the brain may try to reconstruct the missing piece in ways that may change the original memory somewhat. This means that memories can change over time and may not be completely reliable.