What Is Long-Term Memory & the Best Ways to Improve It?

Long-term memory is the unlimited storage of your brain that allows you to hold information for long periods of time and retrieve it at will, even after years or decades. As such, it is a crucial cognitive skill that allows you to function in everyday life and gives you a sense of self.

Although its basic function is easy to grasp, long-term memory is a rather complex system. To help you understand it better, we’ve consulted our experts and asked them to explain its mechanism, its different types, as well as the potential causes of its decline.

In this article, we will condense what they’ve told us.

Key Takeaways

• Long-term memory is a type of brain storage that can hold memories, information, and knowledge for a long time.
• Long-term memory is characterized by unlimited capacity and indefinite duration, meaning that information can stay in it for days, months, years, or even an entire lifetime.
• Long-term memory loss can occur due to aging, medical and mental conditions, or specific medications.
• To improve your long-term memory, you should be active, train your cognition with brain teasers and games, and socialize.

What Is Long-Term Memory?

Long-term memory is a type of brain storage that holds enduring memories and knowledge after these have been processed and repeated frequently enough to be transferred from short-term memory. This transferring process is known as memory consolidation, and it often occurs during sleep.

Unlike short-term or working memory, long-term memory has unlimited capacity, meaning that memories won’t disappear from it to make room for new information.

However, that doesn’t mean information held in long-term memory stays there forever—it can be forgotten if it’s not repeated frequently or important enough.

Long-term memory is crucial for normal functioning, as it allows you to maintain a continuous sense of self by recalling important events and defining moments in your life. Moreover, it’s crucial for acquiring knowledge, learning new skills, performing seemingly simple tasks (reading, for instance), and communicating.

A typical example of long-term memory is remembering where you celebrated your 10th birthday or, for instance, knowing that the sun rises in the east.

Long-Term Memory vs. Short-Term Memory

Long-term memory and short-term memory are crucial cognitive functions that work together to allow you to function normally. However, they have entirely opposite characteristics and perform vastly different roles.

So, for example, long-term memory has unlimited capacity and can hold information for a long time—days, weeks, years, or even your whole lifetime. Information that enters long-term memory tends to be more important, as it is called upon frequently enough to be consolidated.

On the other hand, short-term memory is limited to approximately seven items at a time and only stores information for up to 30 seconds. After that, the information is either forgotten or transferred to long-term memory.

Taking that into account, short-term memory’s main purpose is to hold information for as long as you need it to finish a specific task. For instance, it allows you to briefly remember someone’s phone number as you’re writing it down, after which it’s usually forgotten.

Types of Long-Term Memory in Psychology

There are two types of long-term memory in psychology: explicit memories and implicit memories. Below, we explore both of these types in more detail.

#1. Explicit Memories

Old pictures and long term memory

Explicit memories, otherwise known as declarative memories, are all memories that can be consciously accessed by reminiscing or recalling specific information.

Usually, they are divided into two types: episodic memory and semantic memory.

Episodic memory refers to remembering specific events from your past, such as your trip abroad, the first time you drove a car, or the day you met your best friend. In other words, episodic memory is what we typically have in mind when we talk about memories.

On the other hand, semantic memory refers to knowledge about the world and facts we learned from our parents or teachers. For example, knowing that mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell or that 2+2 equals 4 is considered semantic memory.

#2. Implicit Memories

Unlike explicit memory, implicit memory comes to us effortlessly and without conscious thinking on our part—in many ways, it’s information and knowledge that’s been repeated so many times that it’s become a part of us.

Procedural memory is a perfect example of this; it involves the knowledge of how to use our bodies and common objects, such as cars, books, bicycles, and similar.

For instance, driving, reading, and walking rely greatly on implicit memory. These skills become entirely automatic once we pick them up and repeat them often enough.

In addition to procedural memory, implicit memory includes priming—exposure to a specific stimulus that later influences your reaction to another stimulus without your conscious input. This often occurs when you watch a horror film and then hear a loud sound or see a spider and react far more dramatically than you usually would.

Long-Term Memory Duration

Long-term memory has unlimited storage and can last forever, although it doesn’t have to. Basically, any information you remember for longer than a minute has entered your long-term memory, but it can decay and be forgotten relatively quickly without frequent repetition.

A good example is studying for an exam—typically, you will remember the information you’ve learned for a few days. However, once the exam has passed, the information will slowly fade as you no longer revisit it.

Still, some information can stay in your long-term memory for your entire lifetime. That’s usually information you repeat frequently or memories with particular emotional significance.

However, it’s important to note that memories stored in long-term memory don’t stay intact even when they are remembered for a long time.

In fact, studies have shown that each time you retrieve a memory from long-term memory, it slightly changes. Some of its aspects are strengthened, some are weakened, and your brain may even fill specific gaps in your memories with entirely fabricated details.

Long-Term Memory Loss

A person confused holding his head

Long-term memory loss is a severe condition that can affect your ability to function and perform basic daily tasks. What’s more, it can impact your sense of self, especially if you become unable to recall defining moments and important people in your life.

Below, we explore three common causes of long-term memory loss in more detail.

#1. Age

Like most cognitive processes, long-term memory can naturally decline with age, even if you aren’t suffering from specific medical or mental conditions.

In fact, approximately 16–20% of adults over the age of 60 suffer from some form of mild cognitive impairment—an age-related cognitive decline that’s not extreme enough to be considered dementia but can impair your ability to retrieve memories from long-term memory and perform mental tasks.

#2. Medical Conditions

Aside from age-related cognitive decline, various medical conditions can affect your long-term memory and cause memory loss. Alzheimer’s and dementia are the most common culprits—these conditions affect all types of memory, with long-term episodic memory being one of its first targets.

In addition, brain tumors, strokes, and traumatic brain injuries can all lead to long-term memory loss, most of which isn’t reversible. However, sometimes symptoms can improve with time, depending on the scope of damage.

Finally, some medical conditions can lead to temporary long-term memory loss that usually resolves once the issue is treated. Those include depression and other mental health problems, stress, and vitamin B12 deficiency.

#3. Medication

Certain types of medication can cause brain fog, impaired cognitive functioning, and temporary memory loss. Luckily, these issues usually get resolved once you stop using specific medications, so you don’t have to worry about permanent damage.

Here are some medications that may affect your long-term memory:

• Sleeping pills
• Antidepressants
• Narcotic painkillers
• Antiseizure medication
• Antihistamines (allergy medication)
• Benzodiazepines (anti-anxiety medication)

How to Improve Long-Term Memory

To improve long-term memory and prevent it from declining with age, you should stay active, play brain games and teasers, and socialize frequently. All these activities boost your cognition, which, naturally, has a positive effect on your long-term memory, too.

Let’s explore each of these methods in more depth.

#1. Be Active

A women running and the benefit to long term memory

In addition to benefiting your body, exercise can significantly improve your cognition, too. That’s because it increases the blood supply to your brain, allowing it to get more oxygen and nutrients necessary for proper functioning.

Moreover, it’s proven that cardio improves your memory by increasing the volume of the hippocampus—the area of the brain responsible for thinking and memorizing, among other things. As a result, your risk of cognitive decline or dementia significantly decreases.

#2. Play Brain Games

Video games that help with long term memory

Brain games and teasers keep your cognition sharp by forcing you to exercise your mental muscles, use your memory, and think outside the box to find a solution. In many ways, they do to your brain what weightlifting does to your body.

Aside from brain games, you can also try solving puzzles, doing crosswords, or playing chess. IQ tests can also significantly boost your cognition—especially our IQtest.net, with its professionally designed tasks that challenge your mental faculties and help you develop problem-solving skills.

#3. Socialize

People talking and socializing

Finally, you don’t have to develop some special strategy for improving your memory; sometimes, socializing with your friends and family is enough. Socialization stimulates your long-term memory, as you frequently rely on it for context and successful communication.

In other words, every time you reminisce about the good old times with your friends, you’re exercising your long-term memory. Even if you’re not prone to taking trips down memory lanes, your long-term memory plays a vital role in understanding the topics of discussion and the language that’s being used.

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Final Thoughts

Long-term memory plays a crucial role in performing everyday tasks as well as understanding the world and preserving your sense of self. As a result, its decline can lead to dire consequences that significantly affect your quality of life.

So, it’s important to maintain a lifestyle that promotes cognitive health and ensures that your long-term memory doesn’t decay. Luckily, that can be achieved through exercise, socialization, and solving brain teasers and puzzles.