In cognitive psychology, memory is the faculty of the mind whose function is to record, store and recall information. But it’s fallible, accommodating, faced with an unstable or crazy environment, it transforms the facts so that events become assimilable by our psyche. Taking the atrocious example of the attacks in Paris, the November 13th, 2015, the madness of these events is so far beyond what our brain can assimilate, that it blocks or filters images and certain information.
Each person is different, each brain will block different information. What is true for extreme facts, is also true for our childhood or our adult life. Our memory embellishes, keeps, or passes over in silence, transforms, or even completely suppresses certain events or emotions.
There are several types of memories that localize and interact in different parts of the brain: like the hippocampus and the amygdala and many others. In long-term memory, there are declarative (or explicit, which concerns the storage and retrieval of memories that a person can make appear consciously, and then relate this memory through speech) and non-declarative (or implicit, or procedural, which is not directly accessible to the consciousness). These are memories concerning associations, and know-how.
Then come:
• Movement memory: riding a bicycle.
• The memory of the facts: Catherine de Medici died on January 5, 1589, in Blois (France).
• Episodic memory: I broke my right arm at 10 years old, playing with my dog.
• Sensory memory
• Working memory
• Eidetic (or photographic) memory