Introduction

A)

Absent-minded ? being forgetful, often from a failure to pay attention to one’s actions

Adaptive memory ? that our learning and memory skills are tuned to solving fitness-based problems, reflecting how our memory evolved

Aging ? the impact of time on an organism once maturity is reached

Alcohol ? a chemical (ethanol) with psychoactive effects that is globally used as a recreational drug

Alzheimer's disease (AD) ? the commonest form of dementia characterised by the presence of brain atrophy, amyloid plaques, and neurofibrillary tangles, along with pronounced cognitive decline

Amnesia ? the loss of memory despite the sparing of other cognitive abilities

Amygdala ? a limbic brain structure in the anterior part of the medial temporal lobes

Anaesthetics ? see Unconscious learning

Anterograde amnesia ? the failure to encode, consolidate, or retrieve new information that would normally reside in explicit long-term memory

Associative learning ? the ability of organisms to make connections between related events in their environment

Autobiographical memory ? individual personal episodes along with more general life information that concerns the same individual

Autonoesis ? see Episodic memory, Remember

Availability heuristic ? see Heuristics

B)

Bartlett ? on the contributions of Sir Frederick Bartlett (1886-1969)

Bias ? how our memories are shaped by learnt expectations and prejudices

Binding ? the bringing together of different elements in space and time to create a cohesive entity, be it a sensory percept or a mnemonic representation

Blocking ? 1) The ability of a previously acquired association to block further associative learning about the same contingency, 2) The ability of an initial (incorrect) recalled item to block the recall of other potential solutions

Bottom-up processing ? see Top-down processing

C)

Caffeine ? a widely used stimulant with some positive effects on cognition (see also Nootropics)

Central executive ? a core component of working memory that helps to regulate attention, make decisions, and guide the brief holding of information

Change blindness ? see Illusions of memory

Childhood amnesia (also called Infantile amnesia) ? the inability to recall or recognise personal events from our earliest years

Classical conditioning ?the associative learning of how one stimulus predicts another

Cognitive control ? see Executive functions

Cognitive enhancers ? see Nootropics

Comprehension and learning ? see Understanding and learning

Concept learning ? see Grandmother cells, Hub and Spoke model, Semantic memory

Conditioned taste aversion ? the long-lasting, deep dislike of a taste that had been associated with feeling nauseous

Confabulation ? the fabrication of narratives and other information, often to fill in memory gaps

Confirmation bias ? see Bias

Consolidation ? the progressive stabilization of information post encoding

Constructivism in memory ? the belief that memories reflect our personal understanding of an event, rather than an objective representation

Context and memory ? how the same contextual cues at learning and recall can benefit retrieval while changed contextual cues can disrupt retrieval

Cross-sectional study ? see Longitudinal study

Curiosity ? an intrinsic motivation to seek novel information and so reduce uncertainty

D)

Declarative memory ? explicit long-term memory that incorporates both semantic and episodic memory

Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm (DRM) ? using related words or images to create false memories of a never-presented, but closely related item

Default mode network ? the network of brain areas that increases coordinated activity in between tasks, typically when self-reflecting or mind wandering

Demand characteristics ? the array of cues that convey an experimental hypothesis to the participant

Dementia ? an umbrella term that covers numerous neurological conditions that progressively disrupt brain function and cause the breakdown of multiple cognitive functions

Depression and memory ? the impact of major depression on memory

Depth of processing ? see Levels of processing

Developmental amnesia ? a syndrome of memory loss and memory preservation seen after bilateral hippocampal damage in childhood

Diencephalon ? a core brain area largely consisting of the thalamus, subthalamus, and hypothalamus

Digit span ? see Memory span

Dissociative amnesia ? see Psychogenic amnesia

Distributed practice ? see Spaced training

Directed forgetting ? see Motivated forgetting

E)

Ebbinghaus ? Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) is principally famous for his systematic studies of rates of learning and rates of forgetting

Echoic memory ? the brief sensory store for auditory information, including words

Ecological validity ? a term typically used when considering how well a set of experimental findings can be generalized to real-world settings

Ecphory ? when a cue helps trigger the memory of a past event

Eidetic memory ? an unusually vivid form of visual memory that is highly accurate

Elaborative rehearsal ? the process of considering the meaning of a stimulus and its implications, processes that create additional connections and enhance recall

Embodied cognition ? the notion that the way we think is shaped by our bodily perceptions and experiences

Emotion and memory ? the interplay between affect and the elements of memory

Encoding specificity principle ? see Context-dependent memory and Ecphory

Engram ? the enduring trace that records a memory and is potentially available for retrieval

Epigenetics ? how cellular experiences may modify gene expression without altering the underlying (DNA) genetic code

Episodic buffer ? a subsystem within working memory that provides a two-way bridge with episodic memory and other aspects of long-term memory

Episodic foresight (Episodic future thinking) ? see Future memory

Episodic memory ? our long-term memory for individual events located in a particular time and place (an episode)

Errorless learning ? a method of teaching in which people are prevented as far as possible from making errors whilst learning a new skill or new information

Event segmentation ? how a continuous stream of activity is broken down into meaningful units

Executive functions ? an umbrella term for a set of related cognitive skills that help planning, problem solving, and adapting to new situations

Expert knowledge ? the superior ability to acquire and retain new information within one’s domain of expertise

Explicit (declarative) memory ? the division of long-term memory that holds information over which we have conscious access and awareness

Extinction ? the reduction in frequency or intensity of a conditioned response following the removal of reinforcement

Eyewitness memory ? the study of how and when the remembrance of witnessed events may differ from reality

F)

False memory (syndrome) ? personal narratives for events that never occurred

Familiarity principle ? see Mere-exposure effect

Fear conditioning ? learning in which a stimulus or context becomes associated with fear

Feeling of knowing ? a sense of familiarity indicating the presence of a memory that cannot be fully retrieved

Flashbulb memory ? a vivid, detailed memory of a surprising, emotional event that often includes what the observer was doing when the event occurred

Forgetting ? the absence or error in a memory, whether by inadequate encoding, alteration, erasure, or retrieval failure

Forgetting curve ? the decline in memory over time

Free recall ? the recollection of information as it comes to mind without explicit cues or prompts

Fugue ? a temporary loss of personal identity that appears unaccompanied by physical brain damage

Future memory (episodic future thinking) ? our ability to imagine or simulate future autobiographical events

Fuzzy trace theory ? see Gist

G)

Generation Effect ? how self-generated information is remembered better than information that you have read or heard

Gist ? that some memories only capture the essence of an experience, its gist

Grandmother cell ? a neuron that only responds to a highly specific, complex stimulus (such as one’s grandmother)

Grid cells ? spatial neurons whose firing fields are organized in a horizontal lattice that covers the environment, with each firing field being equally spaced (forming a grid)

H)

Habit ? a behaviour that can be performed without conscious control or a behaviour that is gradually acquired over many repetitive trials

Habituation ? the gradual lessening of a reaction to a stimulus after the repeated presentation of the same or similar stimulus

Head-direction cells ? neurons that selectively fire when facing a particular direction (‘the brain’s compass’)

Hebb ? Donald O. Hebb (1904-1985), a Canadian psychologist best known for his pioneering work on neural networks and learning

Heuristic ? a cognitive shortcut (rule-of-thumb) that aids rapid decision making

Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) (also known as Hyperthymesia) ? the ability to retain past autobiographical memories at exceptional levels of detail

Hippocampal formation (Hippocampus) ? a medial temporal lobe structure that critically contributes to a range of memory functions, including those required for episodic memory and spatial navigation

Hippocampal replay ? see Memory replay

H.M. ? Henry Molaison (1926-2008) is the best-known and most studied case of amnesia

Homunculus ? i) the seductive fallacy of a little human solving problems inside our head, ii) the outline of a human body across our motor and somatosensory cortices

Hub and Spoke model of semantic memory ? a model of how we represent semantic information

Hyperthymesia ? see Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory

Hypnosis and memory ? on whether hypnosis can aid the retrieval of memories or disrupt aspects of memory

I)

Iconic memory ? a brief visual store thought to combine two forms of visual persistence

Illusions of memory ? when our recall or recognition of a past event markedly deviates from the real experience

Imagery and memory ? how a mental pictorial representation impacts on memory

Imagination inflation (see also False memories) ? how imagining events that did not occur increases the likelihood of believing in their reality

Imitation (Imitative learning) ? social learning that involves copying the actions of others

Implicit memory (Nondeclarative memory) ? that component of long-term memory which is not consciously accessible

Imprinting ? whereby an animal learns, during a sensitive period, to confine its preferences to a specific stimulus (typically another individual), class of stimuli, or location

Inattentional blindness ? see Illusions of memory

Incidental learning ? learning that occurs without the explicit intention to learn and memorise

Infantile amnesia ? See Childhood amnesia

Instrumental learning (Operant conditioning) ? associative learning in which the likelihood or intensity of a response is regulated by its outcome

Interference ? competition between similar information that can cause memory errors

Irrelevant speech (sound) effect ? how background speech or word-like sounds can disrupt ongoing memory tasks and comprehension

Isolation effect ? see von Restorff effect

J)

Jost’s law ? see Ebbinghaus, Ribot’s law

K)

Korsakoff’s disease (syndrome) ? a form of organic amnesia associated with vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficiency, and most often seen in chronic alcoholics

L)

Latent inhibition ? when a familiar stimulus takes longer to acquire a new association than a novel stimulus

Learning ? at its simplest, learning is commonly defined as behavioral change brought about by experience

Learning-set ? learning to learn, so that previous similar problems lead to the acquisition of a rule (learning-set) to help solve the same class of problems

Learning styles ? a teaching vogue which presumes that students learn better when receiving information in their preferred medium (style), e.g., auditory, visual, or kinaesthetic

Levels of processing ? the concept that the deeper you process information the better it is subsequently remembered

Lloyd-Morgan’s canon ? see Instrumental learning

Longitudinal study ? repeatedly testing the performance of the same individual over time

Long-term memory ? a repository of stored information that persists for minutes, days, or even years (sometimes referred to as secondary memory)

Long-term depression (LTD) ? although the term can refer to a chronic depressive disorder, here it concerns a process that weakens connections between neurons, often acting in the opposite way to long-term potentiation (LTP)

Long-term potentiation (LTP) ? the lasting strengthening of synaptic efficacy following pulses of stimulation

M)

Maintenance rehearsal ? see Elaborative rehearsal

Mammillary bodies ? see Diencephalon, Korsakoff’s syndrome

Massed learning ? see Spaced learning

Memory ? the meaning of memory

Memory in sensitive plants and unicellular organisms, including slime moulds ? on whether memory exists in organisms that lack neurons

Memory replay ? the reactivation of sequential activity patterns in neuronal assemblies that replays their prior patterns of activity during learning

Memory span ? a test of short-term memory in which a series of items are recalled in their order of presentation

Mental time travel ? see Future memory (Future episodic memory)

Mere-exposure effect ? how, after repeated exposure, a neutral stimulus acquires positive values

Metamemory ? the introspective ability to monitor your own memory processes, including its content and capabilities

Method of loci ? A memory aid (mnemonic) that involves making visual images of items to be remembered, and placing these images in a pre-set sequence of visualised locations

Mild cognitive impairment ? a condition causing memory or other thinking problems that is often, but not always, a transitional phase leading to dementia

Mirror neuron ? a neuron that increases its activity when performing an action and when observing that same action

Mnemonics ? effortful cognitive strategies used to improve memory

Mnemonists ? individuals who possess exceptional memory abilities, whether seemingly spontaneously or by dint of exhaustive training

Mood congruency ? see Context-dependent memory

Motivated forgetting ? an effortful process that helps us to forget unwanted memories

Motor learning ? see Procedural learning

Multiple trace theory (of consolidation and retrieval) ? that each retrieval effort creates a new memory trace, as a result of which the hippocampus remains necessary for the consolidation and retrieval of past episodic memories, irrespective of their age

N)

n-back task ? where participants mentally hold a continuous sequence of items while checking for any repeats from a specified number of places (n) back in the sequence

Neurogenesis ? the creation of new neurons

Nicotine ? an addictive drug that activates one of the two major types of acetylcholine receptors (nicotinic) and is thought to influence cognition

Nondeclarative memory ? see Implicit memory

Nootropics (‘Cognitive enhancers’, ‘Neuroenhancers’, ‘Smart drugs’) ? chemicals and supplements purported to improve cognition, including learning and memory

O)

Observational learning ? social learning based on imitation that makes it possible to acquire new behaviours and knowledge

Olfactory memory ? memory for smells

Operant learning ? see Instrumental learning

P)

Partial reinforcement extinction effect ? see Extinction

Partial report method ? see Iconic memory, Echoic memory

Pattern completion and Pattern separation ? ‘Pattern completion’ is the process of retrieving a complete memory representation from a partial or degraded cue; ‘Pattern separation’ is the process of segregating similar experiences into distinct, dissimilar representations

Pavlovian conditioning ? see Classical conditioning

Penfield (Wilder Penfield, 1891-1976) ? see Engram

Perceptual learning ? see Expert knowledge

Phenotype ? the observable attributes displayed by an individual

Phonological loop ? a working memory subsystem for speech-based sounds

Place cells ? neurons that signal a specific location by increasing their activity

Prediction error ? the mismatch between a prior expectation and the experienced event

Preverbal learning ? that period of learning by infants prior to verbal communication, typified by other communication skills such as vocalizations, gestures, and eye contact

Primacy effect ? the superior recall of the first few items in a sequence

Primary memory ? see Short-term memory

Priming ? when exposure to a stimulus (now ‘primed’) influences our response to a subsequent stimulus

Proactive interference ? see Interference

Procedural memory ? the implicit memory for skills, habits, and cognitive actions that are performed automatically and for which we lack conscious awareness of their underlying nature

Prospective memory ? the cognitive ability to remember to perform an intended action or recall a planned intention at an appropriate future time

Psychogenic amnesia (or Dissociative amnesia) ? a memory dysfunction, typically involving a loss of personal memories, which arises from psychological stress or trauma yet without detectable brain damage (or damage that could account for the degree of memory loss)

Q)

Qualia ? the subjective conscious experience of a quality or property

R)

Reality monitoring ? see Source monitoring

Recall ? see Remember

Recency effect ? the superior recall of information presented at the end of a list over those items presented in the middle

Recognition memory ? the ability to detect the re-occurrence of a stimulus

Reconsolidation (and Reconstruction) ? the process whereby the retrieval of a memory renders it unstable and prone to modification

Recovered memories ? see Repression of memory

Rehearsal ? the mental repetition of an item to prolong its storage

Reinforcement and Reward ? terms describing how pleasant or unpleasant stimuli can influence the likelihood of a preceding action

Remember (Recall, Retrieve) ? to access a memory (or past representation)

Remember/Know ? see Recognition memory

Replication crisis (Reproducibility crisis) ? a methodological crisis concerning how many published findings (e.g., in psychology) are difficult or seemingly impossible to reproduce

Repression (memory) ? the self-removal of a traumatic memory that cannot be accommodated in conscious memory

Retrieval ? see Remember

Retrieval effect (Retrieval practice effect) ? see Testing effect

Retroactive interference ? see Interference

Retrograde amnesia ? the sudden loss of past memories, typically following a neurological insult

Ribot’s law (1881) ? that in retrograde amnesia, recent memories are more likely to be lost than older memories

S)

Savants ? people who display spectacular feats of memory, the term ‘savant syndrome’ being largely reserved for those who also face neurodevelopmental challenges

Savings ? using rates of relearning to assess original levels of learning and retention

Schema ? an acquired mental framework that guides the interpretation, organization, and recollection of incoming information

Scripts ? see Schemas

Semantic dementia ? a subtype of frontotemporal dementia that predominantly affects language skills, in particular, word comprehension and naming

Semantic memory ? a division of explicit long-term memory that holds general knowledge about the world, including facts, concepts, words, and number meanings

Sensitization ? when the repeated exposure to a stimulus results in an amplification of responsiveness to that stimulus, and potentially to other stimuli

Sensory memory ? see Echoic memory, Iconic memory

Serial position effect ? see Primacy effect, Recency effect

Short-term memory ? a store holding restricted amounts of information over short time periods

Smart drugs ? see Nootropics

Source monitoring ? the cognitive ability to identify the origin of a memory

Spaced training (Spaced learning) ? how distributed practice results in more effective learning and more durable retention

State-dependent learning (State-dependency) ? see Context and memory

Superstitious learning ? the mistaken learning that occurs when an action is coincidentally paired with a reinforcer

Synaptic plasticity ? see Long-term depression and Long-term potentiation

T)

Taxi drivers (London) ? insights into brain plasticity and spatial learning made possible by the unique training demands on London taxi drivers

Testing effect ? how taking tests during the learning phase facilitates later retrieval from long-term memory

Tip-of-the-tongue (tip-of-the-finger, tip-of-the-eye) ? the feeling that you are on the brink of recollecting a word, but the correct word will not come to mind

Tobacco smoking ? see Nicotine

Top-down processing (also Bottom-up processing) ? how our prior knowledge and expectations influence perceptual and cognitive decisions

Trace decay ? that memories get weaker over time, with time being the critical agent of forgetting

Transient global amnesia ? an anterograde amnesia of sudden origin and brief duration that selectively affects the ability to make or access new memories while sparing other cognitive abilities

U)

Unconscious learning when anaesthetised ? evidence that new implicit learning is possible despite being unconscious

Understanding and memory ? the relationship between depth of understanding and subsequent memory (also see Constructivism, Elaborative rehearsal, Expert knowledge, Levels of processing, Mnemonics, Schemas)

V)

Visuospatial sketchpad ? a subsystem within the multicomponent model of working memory that holds visual and spatial information

von Restorff effect (Isolation effect) ? the enhanced memorability of an item that stands-out from the array by being different or unexpected

W)

White matter plasticity ? how experience-induced changes to white matter accompany learning

Wisconsin Card Sorting Test ? see Learning-set

Working memory ? a cognitive system with limited capacity and temporary duration that actively holds information making it available for reasoning, decision-making, and planning (a more restricted definition applies to animal working memory)

Y)

Yerkes-Dodson law ? see Emotion and memory

Z)

Zebra fish ? a model vertebrate species that has optically transparent embryonic and young larval stages

Zeigarnik effect ? that uncompleted or interrupted tasks are remembered better

Acknowledgements