Episodic Memory

The memory of specific personal experiences and events, including details about what happened, where and when it occurred, and the emotions associated with it. Episodic memory allows people to mentally "travel back in time" to re-experience past events from a first-person perspective, and is distinct from semantic memory (general knowledge and facts) and procedural memory (how to perform tasks). Episodic memory is particularly vulnerable to impairment in Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, where the ability to form and retrieve memories of recent personal experiences progressively deteriorates. The loss of episodic memory has profound effects on quality of life, sense of identity, feelings of continuity, and social relationships. Lifelogging technologies that automatically capture daily experiences can provide external memory cues to support episodic recollection in people with memory impairment.