Intermediate-term memory

In 1993, Rosenzweig and colleagues demonstrated that, in chicks conditioned with an aversive stimulus, percent avoidance of the stimulus (and, by implication, memory of the aversive nature of the stimulus) reached relative minima at one minute, fifteen minutes, and sixty minutes. These dips were theorized to correspond to the time points in which the chicks switched from working memory to intermediate-term memory, from intermediate-term memory to the early phase of long-term memory, and from the early phase of long-term memory to the late phase of long-term memory, respectively—thus demonstrating the presence of a form of memory that exists between working memory and long-term memory, which they referred to as "intermediate-term memory".

Though the idea of intermediate-term memory has existed since the 1990s, Sutton et al. introduced a novel theory for the neural correlates underlying intermediate-term memory in Aplysia in 2001, where they described it as the primary behavioral manifestation of intermediate-term facilitation.

Characteristics

In 2001, Sutton and colleagues proposed that intermediate-term memory possesses the following 3 characteristics:

• Its induction requires translation, but not transcription
• Its expression requires the persistent activation of protein kinase A and protein kinase C
• It declines completely before the onset of long-term memory