The contents of long-term memory and the emergence of knowledge

Abstract

Through a review of the literature, this paper proposes arguments in favour of a multimodal, dynamic, functional, and situational conception of memory. Memory is assumed to contain traces that reflect past experiences. The properties of these experiences are considered to be distributed across multiple neuronal systems, which are responsible, in particular, for sensorimotor and emotional processing. Memory is dynamic because knowledge emerges almost continuously from the activation and integration of these multimodal components. Memory is functional and situational because knowledge emerges from the subject's activity in a given situation, that is from a type of resonance between the properties of the past experiences that have shaped the neuronal networks and the properties of present experiences.

Acknowledgements

We thank Larry Barsalou, who suggested we centre our paper around the questions in the introduction. We thank also an anonymous reviewer for his suggestions concerning the organisation of the paper.