Episodic memory in the context of "Semantic memory"

Imagination is the production of sensations, feelings and thoughts informing oneself. These experiences can be re-creations of past experiences, such as vivid memories with imagined changes, or completely invented and possibly fantastic scenes. Imagination helps apply knowledge to solve problems and is fundamental to integrating experience and the learning process.

Imagination is the process of developing theories and ideas based on the functioning of the mind through a creative division. Drawing from actual perceptions, imagination employs intricate conditional processes that engage both semantic and episodic memory to generate new or refined ideas. This part of the mind helps develop better and easier ways to accomplish tasks, whether old or new.

Long-term memory (LTM) is the stage of the Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model in which informative knowledge is held indefinitely. It is defined in contrast to sensory memory, the initial stage, and short-term or working memory, the second stage, which persists for about 18 to 30 seconds. LTM is grouped into two categories known as explicit memory (declarative memory) and implicit memory (non-declarative memory). Explicit memory is broken down into episodic and semantic memory, while implicit memory includes procedural memory and emotional conditioning.

In psychology, mental time travel is the capacity to mentally reconstruct personal events from the past (episodic memory) as well as to imagine possible scenarios in the future (episodic foresight/episodic future thinking). The term was coined by Thomas Suddendorf and Michael Corballis, building on Endel Tulving's work on episodic memory. (Tulving proposed the alternative term chronesthesia.)

Mental time travel has been studied by psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists, philosophers and in a variety of other academic disciplines. Major areas of interest include the nature of the relationship between memory and foresight, the evolution of the ability (including whether it is uniquely human or shared with other animals), its development in young children, its underlying brain mechanisms, as well as its potential links to consciousness, the self, and free will.

Foresight is the ability to predict, or the action of predicting, what will happen or what is needed in the future. Studies suggest that much of human thought is directed towards potential future events. Because of this, the nature and evolution of foresight is an important topic in psychology. Thinking about the future is studied under the label prospection.

Neuroscientific, developmental, and cognitive studies have identified many similarities to the human ability to recall past episodes. Science magazine selected evidence for such similarities as one of the top ten scientific breakthroughs of 2007. However, fundamental differences separate mentally travelling through time into the future (i.e., foresight) versus mentally travelling through time into the past (i.e., episodic memory).

Explicit memory (or declarative memory) is one of the two main types of long-term human memory, the other of which is implicit memory. Explicit memory is the conscious, intentional recollection of factual information, previous experiences, and concepts. This type of memory is dependent upon three processes: acquisition, consolidation, and retrieval.

Explicit memory can be divided into two categories: episodic memory, which stores specific personal experiences, and semantic memory, which stores factual information. Explicit memory requires gradual learning, with multiple presentations of a stimulus and response.

Endel Tulving OC FRSC (May 26, 1927 – September 11, 2023) was an Estonian-born Canadian experimental psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist. In his research on human memory he proposed the distinction between semantic and episodic memory. Tulving was a professor at the University of Toronto. He joined the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences in 1992 as the first Anne and Max Tanenbaum Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and remained there until his retirement in 2010. In 2006, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada (OC), Canada's highest civilian honour.

The encoding specificity principle is the general principle that matching the encoding contexts of information at recall assists in the retrieval of episodic memories. It provides a framework for understanding how the conditions present while encoding information relate to memory and recall of that information.

It was introduced by Thomson and Tulving who suggested that contextual information is encoded with memories which affect the retrieval process. When a person uses information stored in their memory it is necessary that the information is accessible. The accessibility is governed by retrieval cues, these cues are dependent on the encoding pattern; the specific encoding pattern may vary from instance to instance, even if nominally the item is the same, as encoding depends on the context. This conclusion was drawn from a recognition-memory task. A series of psychological experiments were undertaken in the 1970s which continued this work and further showed that context affects our ability to recall information.

The dentate gyrus (DG) is one of the subfields of the hippocampus, in the hippocampal formation. The hippocampal formation is located in the temporal lobe of the brain, and includes the hippocampus (including CA1 to CA4) subfields, and other subfields including the dentate gyrus, subiculum, and presubiculum.

The dentate gyrus is part of the trisynaptic circuit, a neural circuit of the hippocampus, thought to contribute to the formation of new episodic memories, the spontaneous exploration of novel environments and other functions. The dentate gyrus has toothlike projections from which it is named.