Question: What are the differences between learning and memory, and what are the different types of learning and memory?

Carolyn McGettigan answered on 24 Mar 2010:

Another tricky question, snacks!

There are psychologists who devote their whole lives to researching only one type of either learning or memory, so no matter what I give as an answer here it will never be enough.

In simple terms, we could think about learning as the process by which long-term memories are formed, and supported by a number of possible mechanisms in the brain (all of which Mariana knows much more about – come back, Mariana!). On a separate post everyone mentioned a bit about the role of the hippocampus in cycling new information through the cerebral cortex until it has been consolidated as a memory. These might involve physical changes at the cellular level such as increased connections between neurons, increased speed of neural transmission between brain areas involved in performing a certain task or representing an episodic memory, and possibly even the formation of new neurons.

Memory is generally thought of in three categories: 1. Sensory Memory 2. Short term memory 3. Long-term memory. Sensory memory is like ‘flashbulb’ memory – a fast-fading imprint of sensory stimulation that might only survive a couple of seconds if it is not processed further. Short term memory is that which we use to do tasks like remembering lists of words for immediate recall. Finally, long-term memory can be divided into two forms: Declarative (remembering past events (‘episodic’) or facts about the meaning of things (‘semantic’)) and Procedural (memory for the performance of skills, like riding a bike).

The overall picture is that memory isn’t a kind of static thing in our minds, with single neurons responding to distinct objects in the world. Consider the example of yet aspect to long-term memory called prospective memory, which is ‘remembering to remember’ – in other words, remembering to carry out plans made earlier. This is undoubtedly quite a complex form of memory that requires constant updating. So, the boundaries between learning and memory are perhaps more blurred than you might think.

As far as the neural correlates of different types of memory, there is evidence that the medial temporal lobes are involved in memory for past events, and this can be damaged while procedural memory is preserved. Semantic memory – memory for the meaning of things in the world – is affected in semantic dementia, which involves the death of cells in the very front of the temporal lobe. Short-term memory for spoken items like list of spoken numbers, involves parts of the brain in the parietal, temporal and frontal lobes that get involved in ‘rehearsing’ the to-be-remembered list.