Memory has the ability to encode, store and recall information. Memories give an organism the capability to learn and adapt from previous experiences as well as build relationships. Encoding allows the perceived item of use or interest to be converted into a construct that can be stored within the brain and recalled later from short term or long term memory. Working memory stores information for immediate use or manipulation which is aided through hooking onto previously archived items already present in the long-term memory of an individual.
Visual, elaborative, organizational, acoustic, and semantic encodings are the most intensively used. Other encodings are also used.
Visual encoding is the process of encoding images and visual sensory information. This means that people can convert the new information that they stored into mental pictures (Harrison, C., Semin, A.,(2009). Psychology. New York p.222) Visual sensory information is temporarily stored within our iconic memory and working memory before being encoded into permanent long-term storage. Baddeley’s model of working memory states that visual information is stored in the visuo-spatial sketchpad.
The amygdala is a complex structure that has an important role in visual encoding. It accepts visual input in addition to input from other systems and encodes the positive or negative values of conditioned stimuli.
In psychology, memory is the process in which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved. Encoding allows information from the outside world to be sensed in the form of chemical and physical stimuli. In the first stage the information must be changed so that it may be put into the encoding process. Storage is the second memory stage or process. This entails that information is maintained over short periods of time. Finally the third process is the retrieval of information that has been stored. Such information must be located and returned to the consciousness. Some retrieval attempts may be effortless due to the type of information, and other attempts to remember stored information may be more demanding for various reasons.
From an information processing perspective there are three main stages in the formation and retrieval of memory:
Encoding or registration: receiving, processing and combining of received information
Storage: creation of a permanent record of the encoded information in short term or long term memory
In a far future, people are distributed over numerous planets, many of which have lost contact with Earth's civilisation. On a far ring planet, known as World Called Maanerek by its inhabitants, only a weak memory of Earth has survived, and technology has declined to preindustrial. Maanerek is coveted by a highly developed civilization because it is situated at a location of strategical value.
As the story opens, the protagonist Torrek jumps down onto a large bird with a wing spread of nine meters, kills it and lands with it in the sea, to prove himself worthy of marrying Sonna, a girl of the local tribe.
Torrek and Sonna are seized in invisible bonds and abducted in a spaceship. It is revealed that Torrek was a member of the same military unit of the abductors. In a neurological experiment, he has been sent to Maanerek with his memory emptied, for the sake of infiltrating the natives so that they willingly cooperate. The natives have accepted him as a somewhat strange, but friendly fellow.
While lecturing in Brazil, Dr. Taylor Briggs an American authority on memory consults on a patient found deep in the Amazon. During the exam, Taylor is accidentally exposed to a mysterious substance which unlocks a series of memories in his brain. Memories that are not his. The memory of a killer who committed crimes before Taylor was even born. A killer who is much closer than you may think.
The mystery will rip open Taylor Brigg’s well crafted life, estranging his relationship with his best friend Dr. Deepra Chang, leading him into romance with a beautiful, enigmatic painter Stephanie Jacobs, straining his relationship with his mom’s best friend Carol Hargrave, causing him to question the surrogate father figure in his life, Dr. Max Lichtenstein.