You remember it like it was yesterday, the day you won the 5th-grade spelling bee. On your bike home from school, you pedaled as fast as you could, fueled by the excitement of telling your parents you had qualified for regionals. The word you nailed? “Paraphernalia,” luckily, you had been rehearsing it over and over the night before, until it finally stuck. You burst through the door, ready to share your big news, but your parents don't even hear you at first. Their eyes are glued to the TV as it covers a devastating earthquake that struck just over an hour ago. To this day, you still remember the word “paraphernalia”, the freeing feeling of flying home on your bike, and the exact expression on your mother's face as she watched the news. Why? Because so many forms of long-term memory were activated in that moment. 

So, how do different types of long-term memory manifest? Ever wondered how you can type so fast or shut your brain off when you drive home? It's your procedural memory at work.² It improves efficiency when performing repeated tasks, by storing information subconsciously without you even realizing it. Just like biking home from school, focused on sharing the good news with your parents, you aren’t thinking about the directions. 

On the other hand, sometimes active recall is necessary to reach a memory that's been stored in your long-term archive, like the capital of Spain being Madrid, or how to spell "paraphernalia." Through consistent learning, facts and concepts can become long-term knowledge, which is what we refer to as semantic memory.³ 

Our enhanced attention and hormones during emotionally salient events (like winning the spelling bee) affect the consolidation of memories. This is exacerbated during extremely emotionally charged events, when we form something called flashbulb memories—a type of episodic memory that is characterized by exceptionally vivid and detailed mental snapshots of the moment when we learned shocking news,⁴ like the occurrence of a fatal Earthquake. 

How do memories become long-term? 

All long-term memories begin in the hippocampus, located in the brain's temporal lobe. There are three steps to long-term memory:

1. Encoding: The process of transforming information into a form that can be memorized, like making up songs to help you remember vocabulary in a different language.
2. Storage: Maintaining the information over time. Even if you haven't skied or skateboarded in years, you still remember how. 
3. Retrieval: Accessing and bringing stored information into your conscious awareness, like remembering the times tables when calculating how much money you owe a friend.⁵ 

Consolidation occurs between encoding and storage, and it's the process that allows memories to transition from the short-term to the long-term. It takes place at three main levels:

• Synaptic consolidation (the cellular level): Within minutes or hours of learning new information, like someone's name, your brain chemically “locks in” a new memory trace by strengthening synapses between neurons. 
• Systems consolidation (the network level): Over days, weeks, months, or even years, your brain will gradually reorganize where this information is stored, usually transferring it from the hippocampus to the cortex. For example, eventually, you may just “know” your friend's address automatically without even having to think about it. 
• Sleep-dependent consolidation: During sleep, the brain actively reviews and strengthens memories, helping them integrate new information deeply into long-term storage.⁶

We have a foundational understanding of long-term memory, but much about it remains to be discovered. Ongoing research explores how to improve LTM and how different factors like sleep, nutrition, and mental health play a role, especially in efforts to slow cognitive decline caused by conditions such as Alzheimer's. Other contemporary research is focused on how, with advancements in AI and digital technology, our outsourcing of memory to digital devices is having an impact on our long-term encoding and storage, raising important questions about the future of our cognitive health in a tech-driven world. 

Declarative memory (explicit memory): is a type of long-term memory that involves conscious recall of facts and events. It includes both semantic memory (general knowledge) and episodic memory (personal experiences), and it allows us to intentionally remember information like names, dates, and past events.

Nondeclarative memory (implicit memory): information stored in our brains unconsciously, that we don’t purposefully try to remember, including procedural memory like knowing how to brush our teeth. 

Memory consolidation: Consolidation refers to the stabilization of memory traces, transforming initial, fragile encodings into more durable representations that can persist over time. 

The Forgetting Curve: A model illustrating how memory of newly learned information declines exponentially over time unless we actively reinforce it.

Long-term potentiation: When frequent activation of synapses causes an increase in the efficiency of signal transmission between neurons, it enhances the retrieval of information and memories. 

Hippocampus: A part of the brain known most notably for encoding and consolidating long-term memories. It is located in the medial temporal lobe and is part of the limbic system.

Prefrontal cortex: A part of the brain that controls the retrieval of context-specific information and memories, it is implicated in other executive functions like planning and decision-making.

Schema-building: The process of organizing new information in a way that connects it to what you already know to facilitate learning, retention, and retrieval. 

Attempts to understand memory can be traced all the way back to Plato, who compared memory to a “wax tablet,” suggesting we form lasting impressions based on our sensory experiences, like pressing a seal into wax.⁷ Aristotle theorized that memory arises from lasting impressions left by perception, and that retrieval depends on association, especially when perceptions are accompanied by a pathos (a lasting emotional or experiential impact).⁸ But, the first experimental study on memory retention was carried out in the late 19th century by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, who pioneered the field of memory research.

In 1885, Ebbinghaus published “Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology,” using himself as a subject. Ebbinghaus focused on memorizing meaningless three-letter words (like WOK or BIV) and then measured how well he could retain that information over time. From this data, he created what became known as the Forgetting Curve—a graph that shows how quickly we forget new information when we don’t actively review or connect it to existing knowledge. (50% in a day and 90% in a week).⁹ 

Ebbinghaus was then able to hypothesize that there was a difference between short-term memory and long-term memory, and that there were certain processes required to transfer information from the former to the latter.¹⁰ A couple of years later, in 1890, the “Father of American Psychology,” William James, officially proposed the primary and secondary memory model that distinguished between short-term (primary) and long-term (secondary) memory.¹¹ 

During the Cognitive Revolution in 1968, Stanford University psychologists Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin developed the multi-store memory model, which identified three main types of memory: sensory, short-term, and long-term. Their model highlights the roles of attention, rehearsal, and retrieval in transferring information to and from the different memory systems.¹² 

A year later, in 1969, American psychologist Larry Squire was the first to differentiate between two types of long-term memory: declarative memory (explicit), which requires conscious recollection, and non-declarative memory (implicit), which is subconscious.¹³ Soon after, Canadian-Estonian psychologist Endel Tulving expanded Squire's work by dividing declarative memory into episodic and semantic. Tulving defined episodic memories as related to time in a specific context (an event or personal experience), like your first day of school, and semantic memory as long-term knowledge of facts and concepts, like the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.¹⁴ By the 21st century, these developments have culminated in the construction of a long-term memory chart with branches that categorize different types of LTM.

In the late 20th century, researchers began uncovering the neurobiology involved in long-term memory. With the help of fMRI and PET technology, scientists could identify brain structures like the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex as key players in memory. In the hippocampus of a rabbit, Tim Bliss and Terje Lømo first observed long-term potentiation (LTP), which is when frequent activation of synapses can cause an increase in the efficiency of signal transmission between neurons.¹⁵ LTP was a major discovery for learning and memory because it was physiological evidence for the brain's ability to adapt based on experience, supporting the idea that rehearsal can lead to stronger synaptic connections and more efficient retrieval. 

Today, most scientists can agree that long-term memory is constructive; it's not a perfect recording of information. Our long-term memories are subject to distortion and interference, particularly through proactive and retroactive inhibition. Proactive inhibition is when previously learned information makes it harder to acquire new information, like constantly mixing up our new phone number with our old one. Conversely, retroactive is when newly acquired information disrupts previously learned information, such as forgetting your old number after memorizing a new one.¹⁶

Memories are also shaped by cultural context. For example, it is more likely that Asian Americans encode stories by recalling the narrative holistically, while European Americans tend to remember discrete details—patterns linked to Asian collectivist vs. European/North American individualistic cultural norms.¹⁷ These examples highlight that our long-term memory is dynamic and influenced by various factors like context and individual biases, and as a result, every person's memory is filtered through unique perspectives and subjective experiences. 

Interestingly, the vast and impressive capacity of our long-term memory systems has inspired the formulation of artificial neural networks that simulate our natural memory consolidation and retrieval techniques. Much like our brain, AI relies on temporal modulation of information, learning and adapting based on sequences and patterns of input over time, which mirrors biological mechanisms like LTP.¹⁸ 

Herman Ebbinghaus

A German psychologist who conducted the first experimental studies on memory in 1880. Ebbinghaus outlined the Forgetting Curve, which showed how humans tend to forget information exponentially without practicing to retain it. Ebbinghaus also developed the serial position effect, which suggests that the position of a piece of information in a list (primacy or recency) affects how well it's remembered.¹⁹ 

William James

Often called the Father of American psychology, in 1875, he became the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States at Harvard University. James was the first psychologist to make the distinction between short-term memory and long-term memory by using the terms primary and secondary memory.²⁰

Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin

At Stanford University, they both worked together to develop the multi-store (also known as the modal) memory model, which they published in 1968. This model became foundational for later work in cognitive psychology and is still used today in textbooks and referred back to in modern memory research.²¹ 

Larry Squire

An American neuroscientist who divided long-term memory into declarative and nondeclarative. Squire is also a leading investigator in memory impairment, like amnesia, and how it is impacted by brain damage. Squire carries out much of his research by attempting to trace memory functions to certain parts of the brain and understanding what areas are responsible for what tasks.²²

Endel Tulving

An Estonian-born Canadian psychologist who sorted nondeclarative memory into episodic and semantic memory. Tulving explained that episodic memory allows for “mental time travel,” enabling us to consciously visit our past experiences, whereas semantic memory is simply recollection of general knowledge.²³ 

Tim Bliss and Terje Lømo

Terje Lømo first observed long-term potentiation in 1966, but a publication in 1973 by him and Tim Bliss is often cited as the landmark paper that formally made the introduction. LTP laid the groundwork for research in neuroplasticity and also confirmed the large role of the hippocampus in memory mechanisms.¹⁵ 

Long-term memory is the anchor that grounds our understanding of the world and our place within it. From basic survival instincts to complex problem solving and social connection, long-term memory contributes to nearly every aspect of human life. Its impact is so pervasive that it's nearly impossible to list all the ways it shapes our daily experiences, but here are a few fundamental ones. 

Learning and knowledge accumulation

Long-term memory forms the basis of expertise and proficiency. Can you imagine if we had to start from scratch every day? When we encounter new information, we associate it with what we already know, a process called schema-building. Schema-building is essential for knowledge accumulation because it helps us to scaffold future learning and apply knowledge in real life. 

Russian chess grandmaster Mikhail Botvinik once said, “Chess is the art of analysis.”²⁴ But Botvinnik isn’t memorizing each move; instead, he’s recognizing board configurations and patterns he’s seen before, drawing on long-term memory to retrieve potential strategies. Rather than relying on rote memorization, expert players use pattern recognition and chunking to make efficient, informed decisions during play.²⁵ 

Another practicality about long-term memory is the degree to which we can control it; our long-term memory isn't static, and through repetition, we can actually enhance it. Explained by long-term potentiation: each time we recall a memory, we reinforce the neural pathways that make future access easier. For example, the language learning platform Duolingo uses cognitive science in its exercise design. Their “testing effect” and “spaced repetition” draw from educational psychology and Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve. The result? 90% of educators endorse Duolingo for language learning.²⁶ With intentional practice, our capacity is almost limitless. In fact, some scientists say that our brains are “as big as the internet,” capable of storing up to 1 petabyte of data.²⁷ 

Our unique sense of self

Our long-term memory houses the autobiographical narrative of our lives—our childhood experiences, defining moments, relationships, failures, achievements—all of which form the basis of our self-concept. Not only is long-term memory responsible for the transmission of culture across generations, but also for our personal internalization of it through repeated exposure. Our long-term memory is what connects us to our identity. If you are someone who has overcome lots of adversity, you might deem yourself as resilient, but if you didn't remember any past experiences, you might lose the ability to guide your behavior. 

Creativity is almost always made out to be a spontaneous spark, but it's actually deeply rooted in long-term memory. Steve Jobs once said, “creativity is just connecting things.” An artist draws on inspiration from remembered emotions and metaphors to craft something new, and an engineer may innovatively repurpose a design from one industry and apply it to another. Much of creativity involves recognizing patterns based on what we already know, using long-term memory. Steve Jobs adds, “the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.” ²⁸Actual creativity lies in one's ability to apply long-term familiar concepts in novel contexts. Ultimately, long-term memory is what makes us who we are, unique individuals with subjective experiences.

Learning your lesson 

We don't always make good decisions, but when we do, it's thanks to our long-term memory. Especially when safety and social interaction are concerned, we draw particularly episodic and semantic memories to navigate our present situations and choices. Learning from experience is an evolutionary adaptation that helps with survival; if we got food poisoning from undercooked chicken, we are more likely to be cautious the next time.²⁹ Additionally, we tend to tie our long-term memories with emotions and feelings, negative ones helping us avoid repetition and positively connotated ones guiding us towards rewarding behavior. For example, you were elated when you got an A on the last test you studied for, hoping to repeat that experience, you are more likely to employ the same study techniques that were beneficial. 

Long-term memory simply boosts our success in everyday life, allowing us to critically reflect on our past experiences for a better outcome in future similar ones. This learning isn't limited to individuals; it can apply to organizations too. In 2011, Netflix announced "Qwikster,” a DVD-only service, a decision that backfired quickly. In only two months, Netflix lost half of its stock value. After scrapping Qwikster, they learned that their success was banked on their streaming content. After refocusing, they have been able to build a dominant content empire with original hit series like Stranger Things and The Crown.³⁰ 

Our fascination with memories has resulted in an increased interest with altering their content and influencing their strength. Our endeavors to artificially change the basis of our memories have forced us to ask ourselves lots of questions about their reliability, but also the ethical implications of changing them in the first place. 

False memories and malleability

What if your mind was lying to you, and you didn't even know it? You could've sworn your friend told you to meet at 2:00 PM, but looking back at your texts, you both agreed on 1:00. Subtle environmental cues can often interfere with our memories and what we recall. 

False memory reaserch

Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus demonstrated this phenomenon in a classic memory study.: When asking people to recall an event like a car crash, using words in the questions like “smash” instead of “hit” caused people to estimate higher driving speeds.³¹ In another experiment, Loftus implanted a false memory in participants' heads. They were told that their mothers had described a story of when they were lost in the mall as a child, crying and scared, but eventually found by an older adult. After three suggestive interviews, 35% of the participants were able to completely recount the made-up experience.³² Loftus's findings prompted more questions about howe long-term memory blends truth and falsity. Equally, her work had major implications for how we handle eyewitness testimony in the legal system. 

OCD and false memory 

People with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are particularly vulnerable to false memories. They may experience intrusive thoughts and doubts about past events that are not rooted in reality. For example, thoughts like “did I say something inappropriate at that party? Did I leave the stove on and start a fire?”  can loop persistently. Despite neither being true, these thoughts can manifest into debilitating anxiety and compulsive behaviors to seek reassurance.³³ False memories can also often be found in people who have experienced traumatic events, especially in childhood. Due to the increased cognitive stress caused by traumatic events, the encoding and retrieval of memories are more fragile, which can lead to an increased error rate in accuracy.³⁴ 

Memory editing

We can edit our memories, whether this is changing their valence, dulling them, or adding false ones. There are also therapeutic ways we can reduce or reframe painful memories. These techniques were developed to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but as they gained popularity, they also received backlash concerning the potential consequences of decreased moral learning and emotional resilience from painful memories—where do we draw the line between healing and distortion? EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) involves mentally focusing on a traumatic event while a therapist guides you through bilateral stimulation like eye movements (or tapping, or sound stimulation), which prompts the brain to reprocess the memory without its emotional intensity. 

Despite being endorsed by the World Health Organization and the American Psychological Association, there are still many skeptics because the EMDR mechanism is not concretely scientifically explained or agreed upon.³⁵ Ketamine therapy also intersects with memory science; in low doses, ketamine temporarily disrupts memory retrieval by influencing long-term potentiation. It has been shown to reduce the emotional grip of intrusive thoughts and flashbacks; however, it also can lead to unintentional “rewriting”, and due to ketamine's dissociative effects, patients may be more suggestible and prone to memory distortion.³⁶ 

These unknowns introduce an ethical dilemma, particularly around informed consent, because patients may not fully understand the cognitive trade-offs of these therapies, especially in repeated use. It's important that we are able to distinguish between a shift in emotional interpretation and a loss or reshaping of the memory itself. Memories are key to who we are, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  They often teach us life lessons and build our coping skills. Our memories are already malleable, so the question becomes: why do we need to intervene artificially, and who decides when we should?

Memory boosters

Nutrition and health

Some popular fads and trends are said to have an impact on our memory, particularly in the form of nutrition, supplements, sleep, and exercise. 

In the realm of nutrition, there’s tons of misinformation spread on social media with businesses prioritizing profits over public health. Countless foods are labeled as “hormone balancing” and “cognitive boosting,” yet the evidence behind such claims is often shaky at best and downright fraudulent at worst. Blueberries and fish oils are continuously praised for their memory-enhancing effects and their ability to delay cognitive decline; however, it's important to note that proving a direct improvement in memory from a specific food is incredibly difficult.³⁷ It's also important to acknowledge that research in these areas tends to be skewed. Partially due to the placebo effect, but also because participants often come from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, those who can afford nutritious diets and supplements.³⁸  

Sleep is one area where the evidence is clearer; deep and REM sleep are essential for memory consolidation. But as with nutrition, businesses have caught on to this and begun launching products like “Nightfood” ice cream that claim to enhance sleep stages, which are just schemes that lure health-conscious consumers.³⁹ Should we just let our bodies do their thing? Even well-intentioned tools like sleep tracking apps or smartwatches that over-quantify rest can potentially increase sleep-related anxiety and disrupt sleep quality.⁴⁰

Brain games

Cognitive brain games like Sudoku, or apps like Lumosity, have been proven to somewhat sharpen our cognitive ability and memory, and after all, these aspects of our brain are trainable. But yet again, it's simply important that people are aware that many companies exaggerate their benefits, the transfer of skills from a game to everyday life might not be a clear-cut as advertised.⁴¹ Falling into marketing traps filled with buzzwords can lead to potential overconfidence in a healthy decision that may not have much of an impact. 

London taxi Drivers: the plastic brain

To become a licensed taxi driver in London, you must memorize thousands of streets and landmarks within six miles of Charing Cross, the central point from which all distances in London are measured. Unlike cities such as Manhattan, where streets are organized in a grid, or Paris, with its arrondissements, London is notoriously difficult to navigate due to its disorganized sprawl. This is why cab drivers must pass “The Knowledge,” a test that includes 25,000 street names and 20,000 points of interest, which can take up to three to four years to accomplish.⁴² 

London taxi drivers don't just naturally have above-average memory, but the intensive training they do to pass “The Knowledge” physically grows their brain, specifically the hippocampus region. fMRI scans have shown that these taxi drivers tend to have a larger posterior hippocampus, and that the enlargement is correlated with the amount of time spent as a taxi driver. This correlation illustrates our brain's neuroplasticity as the posterior hippocampus can adapt to meet the exceptional cognitive needs of creating highly specialized mental maps, in order to pass “The Knowledge.” 

This cognitive upgrade, however, comes with a caveat: the scans also showed a shrinkage in the anterior hippocampi, the brain region that responds to novelty, for the learning of new spatial information.⁴³ What these findings are most applauded for is answering the “chicken and the egg debate.” By looking at hippocampal development over time, scientists observed that the hippocampus grows, proving that our brains are remarkably trainable, even in adulthood.⁴²

The lost mariner

In 1995, British neurologist Oliver Sacks published a non-fiction book chronicling unique neurological cases.  One of these cases was that of Jimmie G., a patient of his with Korsakoff syndrome. This is a chronic memory disorder characterized by memory loss and confabulation (making up memories), usually caused by a B1 deficiency, due to alcohol abuse.⁴⁷ 

Patients with Korsakoff syndrome usually end up “trapped in the past” because it erases their memories, starting from the most recent until only the distant ones remain. In his book, Sacks explained how shocked he was by the quality of Jimmie's very long-term memory; he could perfectly describe the house he grew up in, and stories from high school. Sacks remarked that everything changed when Jimmie began to talk about his time in the Navy; as he switched to the present tense and spoke about World War II as a current event, despite the year being 1975. When Jimmie was asked to look in the mirror, he was horrified, expecting to see his 19-year-old self and instead coming face to face with a 50-year-old stranger.⁴⁴ 

Through Jimmie's case, Sacks explores the ties between memory and identity. How is it possible to develop a sense of purpose without memories of the past, allowing you to make plans for the future? Initially, Sacks concludes that without memory, we are recluse. Being stuck 30 years in the past, Jimmie is unable to maintain relationships and engage in everyday activities.⁴⁵ Sacks was confident in his perspective until he saw Jimmy in a church, where the familiar music and spiritual rituals gave Jimmy a sense of connection and belonging.

 Jimmy’s case demonstrates that while our brains can adapt to improve memory, they can also compensate by creating alternative ways of coping when memory is impaired. Although this may not resemble the life most of us imagine, it shows that we can still find ways to make the best of difficult circumstances.

Flashbulb Memories

Where were you when you heard about 9/11? You probably remember. How did you feel when you got into your dream school? You probably remember. These memories might include mundane details like what you were wearing or who you were with, but they are burned into our memory because the moment felt so emotionally significant. Flashbulb memories are a window into how memory is not just about facts but also feelings and meaning. 

Spacing Effect

The secret to long-term memory—the spacing effect. The best way that we can boost our long-term memory is through active recall, which is spaced between optional timing periods. Each time we revisit material after a break, our brains after to work a little bit harder to retrieve it, but this helps us remember it in the long term. 

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