engram

n. the hypothetical memory trace that is stored in the brain. The nature of the engram, in terms of the exact physiological changes that occur to encode a memory, is as yet unknown. The term was introduced by German biologist Richard Semon (1859–1918) in the early 1900s and was popularized by Karl S. Lashley in his 1950 paper “In Search of the Engram.” Also called mneme; mnemonic trace; neurogram.

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Psychology term of the day

February 23rd 2025

concretism

n. in the analytic psychology of Carl Jung, a type of thought or feeling that depends on immediate physical sensation and displays little or no capacity for abstraction. In some traditional societies, such thinking may manifest itself in fetishism and belief in magic. In the modern world, it may display itself as an inability to think beyond the obvious material facts of a situation.