Sensory memory: the memory of your senses

There are many types of memory but perhaps the most extraordinary, as well as ephemeral, is sensory memory. Touching a very hot cup of tea, the smell of a flower, the sound of breaking glass… All this sensory information is stored in our body for a few seconds, although the original stimulus is no longer present.

All these perceptive processes are what allow us to adapt and better understand our environment.. Thanks to our senses we can identify, react to dangers, understand what surrounds us, move naturally and enjoy everything that makes up our world. It’s something fascinating.

Now, a fact that perhaps we had never thought about is the following: our body also has memory. An example, the sensation of a caress remains imprinted on our skin for three seconds. During that very brief moment of time our brain will process said stimulus and will also decide if it deserves to be remembered or forgotten.

Scientific psychology has long focused on these types of processes to better understand how memories are stored, saved or retrieved.. It is a very interesting field that allows us to discover, among other things, that the human eye is capable of remembering up to 12 visual stimuli. Let’s get more information below.

Sensory memory: definition and typologies

Sensory memory is a relatively new field in the world of psychology. Thus, and although figures such as William James were pioneers in the study of the field of perception, it was not until 1967 when we first encountered this term.

It was Ulric Gustav Neisser who coined the term ‘sensory memory’. This psychologist of German origin and member of the United States National Academy of Sciences presented to the scientific community a new model of memory that was as interesting as it was decisive. In works as decisive as Cognition and realityexplained to us how our senses were capable of storing the experience of a stimulus for a short time with a very specific purpose.

That purpose is to discriminate whether each stimulus experienced is worth remembering or not. If the brain considers that we should remember it, it will choose to store it either in working memory or in long-term memory. Likewise, Dr. Neisser also revealed to us that sensory memory is characterized by being differentiated into three categories. Each one of them is associated with a sense, one of those ‘channels’ through which we interact with what surrounds us.

haptic memory

Touching an ice cube, feeling the prick of a flower thorn, knowing if a piece of clothing is wet or dry, hugging someone… All of these sensations are processed by our skin, and especially by our hands. Our cutaneous senses make up what is known as haptic memory.where the memory power of our fingertips stands out above all.

For example, if a tree leaf falls on our bare shoulder, this sensation in that specific space on our skin will last just three seconds. However, If we dig our finger into moist soil to plant a seed, that sensation will last 8 seconds.. All of this reveals to us the great importance that our hands have in relating to the environment.

Echoic sensory memory

Echoic sensory memory is much shorter than haptic memory: it retains auditory stimuli for just over 100 milliseconds.. What does this mean? It implies that when we hear any sound, we will retain it for that short fragment of time; Enough, however, to take a sensory ‘photograph’ and make the brain choose whether to store it in short-term or long-term memory.

On the other hand, it is worth pointing out a small aspect. The brain discriminates the sounds of words. The sound of a door closing is not the same as the voice of our son asking us for something from his room. Thus, If what our ears hear are words, sensory memory is much more refined and stores those stimuli for two seconds. This way, the brain has a little more time to carry out its analysis.

The iconic memory

Iconic sensory memory is undoubtedly the most studied in the field of physiology, neuroscience, medicine and psychology.. The works of Dr. Neisser, added to those of Sakkit (1976) and Long (1979) and Breitmeyer (1984) showed us, for example, that the human eye is capable of retaining between 7 and 12 stimuli or items in that iconic memory. We store them for just 250 milliseconds.

This means that During that brief moment of time, we capture authentic visual photographs in great detail. However, the brain ends up discarding much of that information. Of everything we see throughout the day, very few make it to long-term memory. And when they do, it is because there is either an emotional component behind it or some type of data that our brain has understood as useful.

Likewise, it should be noted that all these selection processes are beyond our control. It is something automatic, a process that we carry out almost every moment without realizing it.

To conclude, sensory memory undoubtedly stands out as a topic as interesting as it is still full of enigmas. Throughout the day, much of the information that our senses receive is lost. The brain carries out a task as precise as it is complex to allow us to save only those data that benefit us in something. With this, it makes our lives easier, safer, as well as meaningful.

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