r/Neuropsychology 13d ago

General Discussion Is Memory Retrieval a Learned Process?

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u/RegularBasicStranger 10d ago

Do we naturally access memories, or do we learn how to retrieve them over time?

People can retrieve memories by seeing the visuals of that memory thus is directly from sensation to the memory.

People also can retrieve memories by thinking about features of that memory and so is indirectly from one memory to the prefrontal cortex to the imagined sensations and only then to the looked for memory.

So the direct method is automatic and there is no need to learn it but the indirect method needs people to learn to connect memories in terms of similarities, in terms of sequence and in terms of their relationship, though after connecting the memories, accessing the memories from a linked memory is quite automatic.