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Memory consolidation was first referred to in the writings of the renowned Roman teacher of rhetoric Quintillian.He noted the "curious fact... that the interval of a single night will greatly increase the strength of the memory," and presented the possibility that "... the power of recollection .. undergoes a process of ripening and maturing during the time which intervenes."
Phenomena in memory associated with repetition, word frequency, recency, forgetting, and contiguity, among others, can be easily explained in the realm of multiple trace theory. Memory is known to improve with repeated exposure to items. For example, hearing a word several times in a list will improve recognition and recall of that word later on.
During the acquisition process, stimuli are committed to short term memory. [1] Then, consolidation is where the hippocampus along with other cortical structures stabilize an object within long term memory, which strengthens over time, and is a process for which a number of theories have arisen to explain the underlying mechanism. [1]
The involvement of arginine and nitric oxide in memory consolidation has been confirmed in birds, mammals and other creatures, including humans. [48] Glial cells have also an important role in memory formation, although how they do their work remains to be unveiled. [49] [50] Other mechanisms for memory consolidation can not be discarded.
Research indicates that sleep does more than allow the brain to rest; it may also aid the consolidation of long-term memories. REM sleep and slow-wave sleep play different roles in memory consolidation. REM is associated with the consolidation of nondeclarative (implicit) memories.
For example, the hippocampus is believed to be involved in spatial and declarative memory, as well as consolidating short-term into long-term memory. Studies have shown that declarative memories move between the limbic system , deep within the brain, and the outer, cortical regions.
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One extensively studied anterograde amnesiac patient, codenamed H.M., demonstrated that despite his amnesia preventing him from learning new declarative information, procedural memory consolidation was still possible, albeit severely reduced in power. He, along with other patients with anterograde amnesia, were given the same maze to complete ...