How do you remember how to ride a bike? Thank your cerebellum
Do you remember the name of your second-grade teacher or what you ate for lunch today? Those memories may be separated by decades, but both are considered long-term memories.
More than half a century ago, neuroscientists discovered that damage to a brain region called the medial temporal lobe (MTL) caused a severe impairment to long-term declarative memory -- memories for explicit facts such as names and dates -- but left very short-term memory intact. Patients with damage to the MTL could keep up with and carry on a short conversation but, just a minute or two later, couldn't remember that the conversation even took place.
Surprisingly, though, those patients could learn new motor skills and retain them for days, months, or even longer, indicating that MTL damage had little effect on memories for motor skills.
So, what brain region is responsible for long-term motor skill memories, like riding a bike? Are there distinct regions where short- and long-term sensorimotor memories are formed? Researchers have been trying to answer these questions for years.
