Key Takeaways
- Episodic memory helps shape your personal identity by creating a sense of personal and shared history.
- Several brain regions, including the hippocampus and temporal lobe, are critical for encoding, consolidating, and retrieving episodic memories.
- Aging, neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, and traumatic brain injuries can significantly impair episodic memory.
An episodic memory is a memory of a specific event. Because each person has a different perspective and experience of an event, episodic memories of that event are unique to each person.
Closely related to this is what researchers refer to as autobiographical memory—memories of your own life history. As you can imagine, episodic and autobiographical memories play an important role in your self-identity.
How Episodic Memory Works
Imagine that you get a phone call from an old college friend. You spend an evening reminiscing about amusing moments from your days at school. Your memories of those specific events and experiences are examples of episodic memory.
Episodic memories are important for shaping your personal sense of identity. These memories:
- Provide you with a sense of personal history
- Create a shared history with others in your life
- Allow you to recall personal experiences that shaped your life and perceptions
Episodic memory creates the fabric of your life history. All of the tidbits of knowledge, memories of things that have happened, and details about your personal experiences are also stored in your episodic memory. It’s a bit like a mental history that allows you to revisit your past and create a cohesive narrative about who you are and the life you’ve lived so far.
Areas of the Brain Involved in Episodic Memory
Several brain regions have been implicated in episodic memory. These regions are part of the default mode network. These areas include:
- Posterior cingulate cortex
- Angular gyrus
- Middle temporal gyrus
- Middle frontal gyrus
- Medial prefrontal cortex
The hippocampus and regions of the temporal lobe are also important for encoding, consolidating, and retrieving episodic memories.
Several parts of the brain work in concert to help you store and retrieve episodic memories: the temporal, parietal, and frontal cortices, diencephalon, and cerebellum. Practice, genetics, and experience all influence your ability to recall episodic memories.
Episodic Memory vs. Semantic Memory
The term episodic memory was first introduced by Endel Tulving in 1972 to distinguish between remembering events from the past (episodic memory) and knowing factual information, known as semantic memory.
Semantic memory is focused on general knowledge about the world and includes facts, concepts, and ideas. Episodic memory and semantic memory are part of the division of memory known as explicit or declarative memory.
Semantic and Episodic Memory Are Interdependent
Researchers have found that episodic memory can also be interdependent with semantic memory.
On learning tasks, participants performed better when new information was aligned with prior knowledge, suggesting that semantic knowledge of a task provides a sort of framework for new episodic learning.
Participants were asked to remember the prices of grocery items. Those in the control group were better able to remember these prices when the new information was congruent with their existing episodic memories of grocery prices.
Amnesiac participants in the experimental group, however, performed much worse at remembering new information because they did not have access to episodic information from their past.
Researchers have also found that episodic memories also play a role in the retrieval of semantic memories.
In experiments in which participants were asked to generate lists of items in particular categories, those who could rely on episodic memories performed better than amnesiac participants who lacked episodic memory.
Different Types of Episodic Memories
Episodic memories fall into a few main categories:
- Specific events: These involve memories of particular moments from personal history. Your first kiss, first day of school, a friend’s birthday party, and your brother’s graduation are all examples of episodic memories. In addition to your overall recall of the event itself, the episodic memory includes the locations and times of the events.
- Personal facts: Knowing who was president the year you got married, the make and model of your first car, and the name of your first boss are all examples of episodic personal facts.
- General events: Remembering what a kiss feels like exemplifies this general type of memory. You do not remember each and every kiss you’ve ever shared, but you can recall what it feels like based on your personal experiences.
- Flashbulb memories: These are vivid, detailed “snapshots” associated with learning particularly important news. Sometimes these moments might be highly personal, like the moment you found out that your grandmother had died.
In other cases, these memories might be shared by many people in a social group. The moments you found out about the 9/11 attacks or the Paris concert theater attacks are examples of shared flashbulb memories.
What It Looks Like In Everyday Life
Some examples of episodic memories might include:
- What happened on your recent trip to Disneyland
- Where you were when you learned that a loved one had died
- Your old cell phone number
- Your first day at your job
- Your first date with your partner
Each person’s episodic memory of an event is entirely unique. Even other people who shared the same experience may have different recollections of what happened.
Episodic memories can be of important details or events from your life (like the day you met your partner or your social security number). They also include much more mundane information.
Your memory of a particular year you attended your first concert or of what you had for breakfast yesterday morning is also an example of episodic memory.
Characteristics That Make It Unique
Research indicates that episodic memory has specific attributes that distinguish it from other forms of memory. Other types of memory include some of these, but only episodic memories include all of them. Episodic memories:
- Contain summary records of sensory-perceptual-conceptual-affective processing
- Retain patterns of activation/inhibition over long periods
- Are often represented in the form of (visual) images
- Always have a perspective (field or observer)
- Represent short time slices of experience
- Are represented on a temporal dimension roughly in order of occurrence
- Are subject to rapid forgetting
- Make autobiographical remembering specific
- Are recollectively experienced when accessed
Studies also suggest that there are sex differences in episodic memory.
Research has found, for example, that women tend to outperform men on episodic memory tests, particularly on verbal episodic memory. Studies also show that women can access these memories faster and date them more accurately than men.
Why Such Memories Are So Important
Episodic memory has a profound effect on your life. It’s almost like a sort of ‘mental time machine’ that allows you to return to past periods of your life.
Anytime you revisit a moment from your past, whether you’re remembering your first day of kindergarten, what you wore to work yesterday, or some other personal detail, you’re drawing on your episodic memory.
Such memories help create a cohesive experience. They allow you to form a personal history that plays a role in your identity and sense of self.
What Happens When It’s Damaged?
Aging and neurodegenerative diseases take an extreme toll on episodic memory. For example, a decline in the ability to retrieve this kind of memory is among the first signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
Other psychiatric conditions that can cause deficits in episodic memory:
However, such damage is difficult to assess because memories are difficult to induce and measure.
Likewise, traumatic brain injury, such as a concussion, tends to impede episodic memory. Semantic memory appears to be less susceptible to this kind of damage.
If you are experiencing problems with episodic memory, it is important to talk to your doctor for further evaluation and treatment.
Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
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