9. Memory Organization: The Role of the Hippocampus and Different Memory Structures

 Memory, which is an aspect of human cognition, is what allows us to retrieve specific events/occurrences/experiences, from the past. Nevertheless, have you ever realized how your brain stores all these succeeding information? Let's go deeper and understand how hippocampus helps in organizing memories and all the ways in which memories can be organized.

The hippocampus is the crucial brain structure that allows us to make and remember memories. It facilitates this act of the brain because it makes us remember information by conscious recall of the particular and specific details about past experiences. Consider, for example, the last party you had for your birthday or some important vacation you have just come back from. In these moments your hippocampus is responsible for remembering these things.

Source: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-hippocampus-2795231

One interesting memory organization issue is that, between retrieval of recollection and familiarity, recollection is more accurate while familiarity is related to the feeling of knowing something. Recognition is evoking the particular details of an event in the context in which it had the occurrence, while remembrance refers to a sense of the familiarity of a stimulus regardless of its context. Data demonstrated that hippocampus injuries were linked to an inability to conduct retrieval-based memory tasks successfully due to the role of the hippocampus in memory formation.

Memory organization can be further understood through three organizational structures: Associative, Sequential and schematic. Associative memory process is the way of interconnections of memories by their closeness, mutual connections, and relationships between them. For example, how likely are you to remember a romantic relationship with the help of a particular song and those overwhelming feelings rekindle when you hear the song again! While sequential organization groups memories in linear or chronological order according to the sequence of events. This is what governs different processes in memory like the steps in cake baking or following a recipe. A schematic approach means integrating separate facts and factual knowledge into large structures or general frameworks. This enables us to extract both the direct and indirect relationships that are connected by the structural rules. Take the classroom setting as an example, you can access the layout and features of a typical classroom even when you are visiting a new one.

Thus, it is a complex process since various brain regions work together. Hippocampus, together with other memory centers, is responsible for consolidating and retrieving information. The exploration of a brain's memory structure can elucidate to us how our brains perceive the environment.