Recordings show prolonged activity in the visual cortex when looking at images, outlasting conscious awareness of image. More than a quarter of all stroke victims develop a bizarre disorder — they lose conscious awareness of half of all that their eyes perceive.
Relatedly, where are memories stored? How can we have flashes of memory from decades ago? Why can we not access certain memories until something traumatic or triggering happens and then it comes flooding back? Why do smells trigger memory?
Long term memories are stored in the hypothalamus as you sleep at night.
Smells are tied to more primitive structures in in the brain. I'm a little rusty on why it makes the memories so strong, but there's quite a bit of research out on that one.
Trauma is also encoded differently, but there's a lot of garbage research that muddies the waters on that particular subject.
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