Explicit memory is the conscious, intentional recollection of facts, events, and experiences. It is the form of memory you can declare and discuss—hence its other name, declarative memory.

Two major subdivisions exist. Semantic memory stores general knowledge: the capital of France, the meaning of words, the rules of arithmetic. Episodic memory stores personally experienced events tied to particular times and places: what you had for breakfast, the first day of school, a conversation from last week. Both depend heavily on the medial temporal lobe, especially the hippocampus, for the formation of new memories. Once consolidated, they can be retrieved with varying degrees of effort and vividness.

Explicit memory is what is tested by free recall, cued recall, and recognition tasks. It is vulnerable to aging, to certain forms of amnesia, and to the passage of time. Yet it is also highly flexible: facts and events can be recombined, imagined, and used to plan future actions.

When you deliberately search your mind for a name or a date, you are using explicit memory.