Memory is defined as: the faculty of the brain by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed, vital to experiences, and is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action.
Let’s get academic for the moment if we haven’t already. This from LumenLearning:
- It is theorized that memories are stored in neural networks in various parts of the brain associated with different types of memory, including short-term memory, sensory memory, and long-term memory.
- Memory traces, or engrams, are physical neural changes associated with memories. Scientists have gained knowledge about these neuronal codes from studies on neuroplasticity.
- Encoding of episodic memory involves lasting changes in molecular structures, which alter communication between neurons. Recent functional-imaging studies have detected working-memory signals in the medial temporal lobe and the prefrontal cortex.
- Both the frontal lobe and prefrontal cortex are associated with long- and short-term memory, suggesting a strong link between these two types of memory. Damage there is monumental.
- The hippocampus is integral in consolidating memories but does not seem to store memories itself.
For all those who know what part of the brain-sustained damage, and you should demand to know by asking your doctor, the following descriptions of the different types of memory will be useful to determine where your loss is according to where it’s positioned. 
- Sensory Memory:
Brain part most relevant: Temporal and Occipital lobes
The ability to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimuli have concluded and the shortest-term element of memory through the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, which are retained accurately, but very briefly.
- Short-Term Memory:
Brain part most relevant: Pre-Frontal Cortex, Frontal, and Parietal lobes
Short-term memory is followed hand-in-hand with sensory memory and allows the ability to hold on to a piece of information temporarily in order to complete a task or remember directions, for example.
Long-Term Memory:
Long-term memory allows the ability to decode information, create associations among an object’s various properties, and develop opinions.
(For Sensory and Long-Term Memory: The Temporal lobe is where lies the hippocampus, a small organ which forms an important part of the limbic system, the region that regulates emotions and events that happened in the past. Needless to say, it’s complicated).
And this from McGill U in Canada:
In regard to long-term memory, researchers found two types:
Declarative memory, aka explicit memory, is what happens when you recall your birthday or what you recall eating last night. You can name and describe each of these remembered things explicitly.
On the other hand, the brain is the least understood part of the human body. But practicing meditation, drinking coffee, eating berries, chewing gum, doing exercise, and getting enough sleep are harmless, and one or some of those activities may do the trick.
You know what I always say: if it works, use it.
