There are many skills and activities which in some sense can be regarded as having a memory component. I have considered only two kinds of memory ‐ memory for facts and memory for events. Drawing on the evidence of individual case studies and on selected small group studies, it is argued that qualitatively distinct and dissociable cortical systems subserve these two kinds of memory. In particular, I have argued that semantic knowledge systems are categorical in their organization and by contrast that memory for events is dependent on the operation of cognitively mediated schemata, and that the interaction of both systems is necessary for effective rememberin