<P> The process dissociation procedure provides a general framework for separating the influences of automatic processes from the intentional processes and can be applied to a variety of domains . Later, Visser & Merikle also employed the process dissociation method to demonstrate the effects of motivation on conscious and unconscious processes . </P> <P> Besides the study of amnesic patients, other evidence also indicates a separation between implicit and explicit memory . Basic patterns that exist for explicit memory development do not apply to implicit memory, implying that the two are two different processes . Children tested at various increasing ages, in different stages of development, do not exhibit the same increase in performance in implicit memory tasks the way they always do with explicit memory tasks . The same is true for elderly people . Studies show that as people grow older, their performance on explicit memory tasks declines, however their performance on implicit memory tasks does not decline at all . </P> <P> Neuropsychology has used imaging techniques such as PET (positron emission tomography) and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to study brain - injured patients, and has shown that explicit memory relies on the integrity of the medial temporal lobe (rhinal, perirhinal and parahippocampal cortex), the frontal--basal areas and the bilateral functionality of the hippocampus . The amygdala is mainly responsible for the emotional component in the process of information storage (see Gazzaniga, 1999; Mancia, 2000b, 2004, in press), and can modulate both the encoding and the storage of hippocampal - dependent memories (Phelps, 2004). Implicit memory, by contrast, is not conscious and concerns data that can be neither remembered nor verbalized . It presides over the learning of various skills: a) priming, which is the ability of an individual to choose an object to which he has previously been exposed subliminally; b) procedural memory, which concerns cognitive and sensorimotor experiences such as motor skills learning, everyday activities, playing instruments or playing certain sports: c) emotive and affective memory, which concerns emotional experiences, as well as the phantasies and defences linked to the first relations of the child with the environment and in particular with the mother . </P> <P> Many experiments have been performed to demonstrate the differences between implicit and explicit memory . One such method of differentiation is revealed through the depth - of - processing effect . In a 1981 study by Jacoby and Dallas, subjects were first given a list of words and asked to engage with them in some way . For some of these words, subjects were asked to interact with the words in a relatively superficial way, such as counting the number of letters in each given word . For one set of words, subjects performed tasks that required elaborative processing (denotation), such as answering questions about a word's meaning . They were then given a test that assessed their ability to recognize whether they had seen the word in the studying part of the experiment . Because depth of processing aids in the explicit memory of a word, subjects showed better memory for the words that required elaborative processing on this test . When implicit memory was tested through flashing words on a screen and asking subjects to identify them, however, the priming effect was extremely similar for the words that involved elaborative processing as compared to the words that did not . This suggests that implicit memory does not rely on depth of processing as explicit memory does . </P>

Where are implicit memories stored in the brain