<P> Those with Alzheimer's disease generally display symptoms such as getting momentarily lost on familiar routes, placing possessions in inappropriate locations and distortions of existing memories or completely forgetting memories . Researchers have often used the Deese--Roediger--McDermott paradigm (DRM) to study the effects of Alzheimer's disease on memory . The DRM paradigm presents a list of words such as doze, pillow, bed, dream, nap, etc., with a theme word that is not presented . In this case the theme word would have been sleep . Alzheimer's disease patients are more likely to recall the theme word as being part of the original list than healthy adults . There is a possible link between longer encoding time and increased false memory in LTM . The patients end up relying on the gist of information instead of the specific words themselves . Alzheimer's leads to an uncontrolled inflammatory response brought on by extensive amyloid deposition in the brain, which leads to cell death in the brain . This gets worse over time and eventually leads to cognitive decline, after the loss of memory . Pioglitazone may improve cognitive impairments, including memory loss and may help protect long - term and visiospatial memory from neurodegenerative disease . </P> <P> Parkinson's disease patients have problems with cognitive performance; these issues resemble what is seen in frontal lobe patients and can often lead to dementia . It is thought that Parkinson's disease is caused by degradation of the dopaminergic mesocorticolimbic projection originating from the ventral tegmental area . It has also been indicated that the hippocampus plays an important role in episodic and spatial (parts of LTM) memory and Parkinson's disease patients have abnormal hippocampuses resulting in abnormal functioning of LTM . L - dopa injections are often used to try to relieve Parkinson's disease symptoms as well as behavioral therapy . </P> <P> Schizophrenia patients have trouble with attention and executive functions which in turn affects long - term memory consolidation and retrieval . They cannot encode or retrieve temporal information properly, which causes them to select inappropriate social behaviors . They cannot effectively use the information they possess . The prefrontal cortex, where schizophrenia patients have structural abnormalities, is involved with the temporal lobe and also affects the hippocampus, which causes their difficulty in encoding and retrieving temporal information (including long - term memory). </P> <P> Long - term memory, unlike short - term memory, is dependent upon the synthesis of new proteins . This occurs within the cellular body, and concerns the particular transmitters, receptors, and new synapse pathways that reinforce the communicative strength between neurons . The production of new proteins devoted to synapse reinforcement is triggered after the release of certain signaling substances (such as calcium within hippocampal neurons) in the cell . In the case of hippocampal cells, this release is dependent upon the expulsion of magnesium (a binding molecule) that is expelled after significant and repetitive synaptic signaling . The temporary expulsion of magnesium frees NMDA receptors to release calcium in the cell, a signal that leads to gene transcription and the construction of reinforcing proteins . For more information, see long - term potentiation (LTP). </P>

What is the process of long term memory