The hippocampus is like a flash drive.

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The hippocampus is an important part of the brain. It is a small, curved organ located within the brain’s temporal lobe that plays a significant role in the limbic system. The hippocampus is associated mainly with memory and plays a critical part in the formation, organization, and storage of these memories. You can imagine the hippocampus as a flash drive, a device used to store data. Flash drives obtain the power to operate from the device to which they are connected to which is typically a computer. The temporal lobe is like the computer for the hippocampus, forming its conscious memories that are eventually stored. Not only does the hippocampus assist with the storage of memories, but it’s also responsible for memorizing the location of objects and people. There are two types of memories that the hippocampus helps humans process and retrieve, declarative and procedural. Declarative memories are those related to facts and events while procedural memories involve knowing how things are done. Damage to any part of the hippocampus can lead to difficulty in establishing new memories and loss of previous memories. As for the flash drive, any sort of damage to it can also result in the loss of its stored information.

Citations:

Cherry, Kendra, and Steven Gans. “How Important Is the Hippocampus in the Brain?”Verywell Mind, Dotdash, http://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-hippocampus-2795231.

Anissimov, Michael, and Niki Foster. “What Is the Hippocampus?” WiseGEEK, Conjecture Corporation, 11 Feb. 2019, http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-hippocampus.htm.

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