<P> During every moment of an organism's life, sensory information is being taken in by sensory receptors and processed by the nervous system . Sensory information is stored in sensory memory just long enough to be transferred to short - term memory . Humans have five traditional senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch . Sensory memory (SM) allows individuals to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimulus has ceased . A common demonstration of SM is a child's ability to write letters and make circles by twirling a sparkler at night . When the sparkler is spun fast enough, it appears to leave a trail which forms a continuous image . This "light trail" is the image that is represented in the visual sensory store known as iconic memory . The other two types of SM that have been most extensively studied are echoic memory, and haptic memory; however, it is reasonable to assume that each physiological sense has a corresponding memory store . Children for example have been shown to remember specific "sweet" tastes during incidental learning trials but the nature of this gustatory store is still unclear . </P> <P> SM is considered to be outside of cognitive control and is instead an automatic response . The information represented in SM is the "raw data" which provides a snapshot of a person's overall sensory experience . Common features between each sensory modality have been identified; however, as experimental techniques advance, exceptions and additions to these general characteristics will surely evolve . The auditory store, echoic memory, for example, has been shown to have a temporal characteristic in which the timing and tempo of a presented stimulus affects transfer into more stable forms of memory . Four common features have been identified for all forms of SM: </P> <Ol> <Li> The formation of a SM trace is only weakly dependent on attention to the stimulus . </Li> <Li> The information stored in SM is modality specific . This means for example, that echoic memory is for the exclusive storage of auditory information, and haptic memory is for the exclusive storage of tactile information . </Li> <Li> Each SM store represents an immense amount of detail resulting in very high resolution of information . </Li> <Li> Each SM store is very brief and lasts a very short period of time . Once the SM trace has decayed or is replaced by a new memory, the information stored is no longer accessible and is ultimately lost . All SM stores have slightly different durations which is discussed in more detail on their respective pages . </Li> </Ol> <Li> The formation of a SM trace is only weakly dependent on attention to the stimulus . </Li>

Where is sensory memory processed in the brain