Long-term Memory

Long-term memory is mainly visual.
  • Remember your favourite Christmas present that you received as a child.
  • Remember an early event in primary school.
  • Remember a time when you were very proud.

So how did you recall these events? Most people do so by making a picture in their heads.

When most of us recall memories from long-term memory we make a picture. So long-term memory is mainly visual.

WHAT IS THE CAPACITY OF LONG-TERM MEMORY COMPARED TO SHORT-TERM MEMORY?

Amazingly for every one auditory memory brain cell we have 1 600 0000 visual brain cells.

Why has visual memory developed so much compared to the auditory memory?

If we look at the picture below we see that development of man from stone age man up to modern day man.

If we could take all of these billions of years and squash them together into 24 hours, in relative terms we have only been speaking for the past five minutes. Up until then we relied on visual cues to survive: what an enemy looked like, the colour of the berries that were safe to eat, the position of the sun etc.

This explains why visual memory is so well developed in humans.