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Asked by anon-188117 to Warren, Shanti, Pizza Ka Yee, Paul, Nadine, Alex on 14 Nov 2018.
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Alex Reid answered on 14 Nov 2018: last edited 14 Nov 2018 12:05 pm
Hi, fantastic question. The terms ‘long’ and ‘short’ term memories can be a bit of a b=blunt distinction at a behavioural level, what I mean by this is that memory will form a smooth curve stretching back to your first ever memories. As such short and long term memories can be hard to distinguish in terms of your own behaviour and personal (subjective) experiences. In terms of what is going on in your brain shorter term memory are typically reliant on a part of the brain called the hippocampus (and nearby structures) whereas longer term memories reside all over the brain in a more distributed form. Short term memories, depending on a number of factors, can get integrated gradually into long term memories. This may change the qualities of the memory too, and short-term memories may be more prone to forgetting and less stable, while long term memories are more stable and integrated with other memories. This gradual ‘transfer’ happens a lot during sleep (what I study) but it can also happen in wakefulness too. From your perspective though you can still use your memory at all all points during this transition.
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Paul Matusz answered on 14 Nov 2018:
Alex gave a grat answer here – imagine something of a hand-over where information represented in one brain area (or areas) that are very reliant on you repeating and repeating the information for it to be still represented – is repeated so much that it starts activating also other brain areas, those representing (any) information in a more stable way, also because it integrates with part of what is already “knows”. As Alex said, there is no 0->1 short-term content -> long term content; it’s much more gradual.
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