long-term memory

noun

: memory that involves the storage and recall of information over a long period of time (such as days, weeks, or years)

In animal experiments and autopsies of human brains, researchers have found that the hippocampal formation—an inner-brain region consisting of the hippocampus and several other related structures—is critical for the formation of long-term memory.

—Science News

—abbreviation LTM compare short-term memory, working memory

Examples of long-term memory in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

For example, nootropics can also optimize brain activity and neural communication and improve short-term and long-term memory. —Dallas News, 24 Jan. 2023

The robot sighs briefly and packs in his long-term memory cell for the journey. —IEEE Spectrum, 15 Feb. 2023

Benefits of Tai Chi include reducing stress, promoting weight loss, improving cognitive awareness and short and long-term memory, improving balance and strength, relieving nervous tension and calming the mind. —Shirley MacFarland, cleveland, 6 Jan. 2023

This part of the brain is associated with not just spatial awareness and direction, developed during the sensitive period of early childhood, but also short-term and long-term memory. —Jennifer Sala, Discover Magazine, 9 Aug. 2022

Music is a powerful tool to activate long-term memory, including among dementia and Alzheimer’s patients with increasingly diminished memory, making music a unique stimuli even for patients further along into a dementia diagnosis. —Ethan Millman, Rolling Stone, 7 July 2022

Multitasking can interfere with working memory, cause students to do worse in school, and could possibly even create potentially long-term memory problems. —Avery Hurt, Discover Magazine, 10 May 2021

In the fathers, a surge of prolactin helped the neurons form a permanent circuit in the brain, which integrated a pup’s scent into the father’s long-term memory. —Linda Marsa, Discover Magazine, 15 Feb. 2016

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Word History

First Known Use

1940, in the meaning defined above

Medical Definition

long-term memory

noun

: memory that involves the storage and recall of information over a long period of time (as days, weeks, or years)

A short-term memory's conversion to a long-term memory requires changes within the brain that protect the memory from interference from competing stimuli or disruption from injury or disease.

—Alison Preston, Scientific American

But the mystery remains: how do cells in the cortex physically lay down long-term memories?

—Sandra Blakeslee, The New York Times

—abbreviation LTM compare short-term memory