It is often connected to the phrase memory retention. It is the brain's ability to store past experiences, emotions and learnings to be retrieved at a latter stage if needed or if triggered by an event. http://www.livescience.com/32798-how-are-memories-stored-in-the-brain.html
Retrieval is just as the name suggests the brain's ability to make a call back to the encoding stage and re fire the neutrons causing the memory to come flooding back. This is done through specific sets of cues, these include sensory like the sight of some where you played as a child or the smell of food that reminds you of a family member. These then cause involuntary memories to come back to you, the cues can be so small that they are not noticed them but still have a memory come back. This being said you can also cause voluntary memory retrieval by asking yourself a question such as when was the last time you did a certain thing, you then search and retrieve this event by traveling through yous episodic …show more content…
One case study that can relate back to the events of the movie is that of Clive Wearing, who suffered severe head trauma in an accident. This is one part between the cases that does differ and it is that of Clive suffering from anterograde and retrograde amnesia, this means that he could both not make new but also not recall old memories. Since Lucy only suffers from that of anterograde and the fact Clive's case study focused mostly of that anterograde will be the main focus. Although this is a comparison between Lucy and Clive there is one side character in the movie who Clive would be suited better to and that is 10 second Tom like Tom Clive only had the ability to remember things for up to 30 seconds, due to this Clive would continuously think he had just awoke from a coma. But any way to the case study, the first step they took was to conduct an MRI of Clives brain to see the areas that were affected, as is the usually for such anterograde amnesia causes severe damage had taken place at the hippocampus. This would be much the same as Lucy as she showed exact symptoms but with less severity, as seen by the fact that she still has the ability to remember for at least a day. Now while this case study and many