Page 79 - Advanced Biblical Counseling Student Textbook

95% of American adults said they could recall exactly where they were or what they were doing when
they first heard the news of the terrorist attack on 9/11. This perceived clarity of memories of surprising,
significant events leads some psychologists to call them flashbulb memories: a clear memory of an
emotionally significant moment or event. It’s as if the brain commands, “Capture this!” Although our
flashbulb memories are noteworthy for their vividness and the confidence with which we recall them,
misinformation can seep into them.” 120

Storing Implicit and Explicit Memories

Amnesia: the loss of memory.

Implicit memory: retention independent of conscious recollection.

Explicit memory: memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and “declare.”

Hippocampus: a neural center that is located in the limbic system; helps process explicit memories for
storage.

Storing Implicit and Explicit Memories
“Amnesia victims are in some ways like people with brain damage who cannot consciously recognize
faces but whose physiological responses to familiar faces reveal an implicit (unconscious) recognition.
Their behaviors challenge the idea that memory is a single, unified, conscious system. Instead, we seem
to have two memory systems operating at the same time. Whatever has destroyed conscious recall in
these individuals with amnesia has not destroyed their unconscious capacity for learning. They can learn
how to do something – called implicit memory but
they may not know and declare they know – called
explicit memory.” 121

Having read a story once, they will read it faster a
second time, showing implicit memory. But there
will be no explicit memory, for they cannot recall
having seen the story before. If repeatedly shown
the word perfume, they will not recall having seen it.
But if asked the first word that comes to mind in
response to the letters per, they say perfume, readily displaying their learning. Using such tasks, even
Alzheimer’s patients, whose explicit memories for people and events are lost, display an ability to form
new and implicit memories.” 122 (photo from thepeakperformancecenter.com)

The Hippocampus
‘Damage to the hippocampus, (a temporal lobe neural center that also forms part of the brain’s limbic
system,) disrupts some types of memory. Chickadees and other birds can store food in hundreds of
places and return to these unmarked caches (collections) months later, but not if their hippocampus has
been removed. Like the cortex, the hippocampus is lateralized. (You have two of them, one just above

120 Ibid., p. 188.
121 Ibid., p. 190.
122 Ibid.

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