ABSTRACT
Memory is a bit like the computer I am using to write this book: something one only thinks about when it goes wrong but so sophisticated in its workings the marvel is that it ever works at all. When we think of memory we think of a store into which we dump ideas and information for retrieval at a later date. We notice memory when we can no longer locate the things we know we have put into the store. A little thought tells us that memory is more complicated than that. For a start, consciousness and memory are inextricably interlinked. At any time we are conscious not only of what is happening immediately around us but also what has happened in the recent past. Activities like listening, speaking, writing and reading would be impossible without this type of memory. Furthermore, memory isn't just the retrieval of information from a store, it is an experience associated with that retrieval, or its failure. We often have the experience of déjà vu, the sense of remembering something as having happened before when it is, in reality, happening for the first time. Most of us are also afflicted with tip-of-the-tongue experiences, in which we know something is in our memory store but we are unable to get at it. According to Warrington and Weiskrantz (1982), patients suffering from memory failures due to brain damage, known as the amnesic syndrome, often have the reverse experience: they can remember things but have no experience of retrieving that information from their memory stores. Memory is clearly more than a large filing cabinet.
