Sensory Memory

What is sensory memory?

Sensory memory, or sensory register, is a brief collection of information from your senses. This includes your hearing, touch, smell, taste and vision.

Your sensory memory gathers information at the highest resolution — it’s taking a quick, detailed picture of your environment. Then, it sends that information to your short-term memory.

You can’t regulate how long these memories last, but they usually only stay for a couple of seconds. This helps you better understand small nuances about your environment.

What are the types of sensory memory?

Your five senses make up the types of sensory memory including:

• Echoic memory: Hearing
• Haptic memory: Touch
• Gustatory memory: Taste
• Iconic memory: Vision
• Olfactory memory: Smell

What are examples of sensory memory?

Examples of sensory memory include:

• Echoic memory: The melody of your favorite song continuing even after the song finished playing
• Haptic memory: Continuing to feel the grasp after someone lets go of your hand
• Gustatory memory: The taste of dinner remaining after you’ve finished your meal
• Iconic memory: Seeing the color of fireworks after they’ve faded
• Olfactory memory: Continuing to smell bread after walking out of a bakery

How does sensory memory work?

Sensory memory functions in the following way:

1. You experience a sense.
2. The area of your brain responsible for that sense (sensory cortex) briefly activates. It happens very quickly, like pressing a button.
3. You focus your attention on only the important pieces of information gathered.
4. You move those pieces to your short-term memory.

How long does sensory memory last?

Your sensory memory only holds information for about 0.2 to 2 seconds. This can vary based on which sense you experience. For example, iconic memory (vision) typically lasts for 1 second.

What is the capacity of sensory memory?

Sensory memory has a large capacity. This is because you often use multiple senses at the same time.

For example, you may use all five senses when you’re eating a meal. You see the food. You feel the texture on your tongue. You smell the different ingredients. You hear the crunch when you chew. And you taste it. Your sensory memory can take in information from all of those senses as they happen.

While sensory memory has a large capacity, it only lasts for a few seconds before either moving to another memory storage area of your brain or disappearing so you can experience other senses.

What parts of the brain are involved in sensory memory?

There are many different parts of your brain involved in sensory memory. Each sense follows a pathway.

Let’s say you hear a sound. This sound converts into an electrical signal that nerve fibers carry into your brain. It first passes through your brainstem and then up through your thalamus (the middle of your brain). Your thalamus directs the signal to the correct area specific to the sense. In the hearing example, the signal would move to your auditory cortex in your temporal lobe.

The main regions of your brain that help you process information from your senses include:

• Echoic memory: Auditory cortex (temporal lobe)
• Haptic memory: Somatosensory cortex (parietal lobe)
• Gustatory memory: Primary gustatory cortex (split between the insular and frontal lobe)
• Iconic memory: Primary visual cortex (occipital lobe)
• Olfactory memory: Olfactory bulb (at the bottom of your brain)

These areas work together with other regions of your brain to process sensory information to help your sensory memory function.