Visual memory describes the relationship between perceptual processing and the encoding, storage and retrieval of the resulting neural representations. Visual memory occurs over a broad time range spanning from eye movements to years in order to visually navigate to a previously visited location. Visual memory is a form of memory which preserves some characteristics of our senses pertaining to visual experience. We are able to place in memory visual information which resembles objects, places, animals or people in a mental image. The experience of visual memory is also referred to as the mind's eye through which we can retrieve from our memory a mental image of original objects, places, animals or people. Visual memory is one of several cognitive systems, which are all interconnected parts that combine to form the human memory. Types of palinopsia, the persistence or recurrence of a visual image after the stimulus has been removed, is a dysfunction of visual memory.
Close up of the human eye, the main organ of visual sensation
Posterior parietal cortex (light green) is shown at the posterior area of the parietal lobe
An example of the Benton Visual Retention Test. The target stimulus is presented at the top, after a delay participants are asked to recall the correct target stimulus from the list of design cards.
An example of a colored geometrical pattern a subject would encode, store, and recall while performing a visual memory neuroimaging test.
Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, it would be impossible for language, relationships, or personal identity to develop. Memory loss is usually described as forgetfulness or amnesia.
Olin Levi Warner's 1896 illustration, Memory, now housed in the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
The garden of oblivion, illustration by Ephraim Moses Lilien
Regulatory sequence in a promoter at a transcription start site with a paused RNA polymerase and a TOP2B-induced double-strand break
Brain regions involved in memory formation including medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)