Memory was one of the mental processes of the mind. It was the repository of all the information an individual acquired through their lifetime. In this period, the information was being encoded, stored, and retrieved. Memory was divided into stages, with two of them being short-term memory and long-term memory. The act of deliberately storing a memory was known as memorization. The amount of memory an individual could possess was known as memory capacity. The loss of memory was known as amnesia. (TOS: "The Cage", "Wolf in the Fold"; TNG: "Clues", "Conundrum")
The Talosians of Talos IV were capable of reaching into the minds of their specimens and creating an illusion out of an individual's memory for them to relive. For example, Captain Christopher Pike's mission to Rigel VII. (TOS: "The Cage", "The Menagerie, Part I")
In 2268, Commander Spock and Lieutenant Stiles agreed that the USS Enterprise should attack a Romulan Bird-of-Prey which was on the Earth side of the Romulan Neutral Zone. Doctor Leonard McCoy was dismissive of attacking them based on the memories of a war over a century before, and on theories about people they had never met face-to-face. (TOS: "Balance of Terror")
According to Doctor Katherine Pulaski in 2365, reliving memories was a natural side effect of neural stimulation. (TNG: "Shades of Gray")
The memory of an android such as Data worked far differently from that of humanoids in that it recorded a full record of the android's entire existence, so long as the android was conscious. Due to this, Data expressed confusion to Geordi La Forge as to why the ability of the Ullians to retrieve memories was so highly prized, wondering why such memories would be lost in the first place if they were so important. La Forge explained that it did not work the same way for humanoids, but Data objected that his own research into the matter had indicated that the process was in fact the same, that memories were recorded in chains of molecules and that retrieval was simply a matter of accessing the proper RNA sequence. La Forge explained that while this was true, humanoids had memories that they simply were not able to access on the spur of moment, citing the example of how he spent his last birthday, that this was an important event, but he could not recall it. He however, could recall the time had gotten his first pet as if it had happened the week before, despite this having been a much longer time ago. Data concluded based on this that there was no predictable pattern to humanoid memory. (TNG: "Violations")
The fate of those devoured by the Loom, without some form of protection against time anomalies, was that they ate entire histories. Every memory, every hint of existence was gone. (PRO: "The Devourer of All Things, Part II")
See also
- Collective memory
- Computer memory
- Cultural memory
- Engram
- Short-term memory