“Alan Baddeley has added a fourth component to the model for Working Memory, the episodic buffer. This component is a limited capacity passive system, dedicated to linking information across domains to form integrated units of visual, spatial, and verbal information with time sequencing (or episodic chronological ordering^[27]), such as the memory of a story or a movie scene. The episodic buffer is also assumed to have links to long-term memory and semantic meaning.^[28] ‘It acts as a buffer store, not only between the components of Working Memory, but also linking Working Memory to perception and Long-Term Memory‘.^[27]  Baddeley assumes that ‘retrieval from the buffer occurred through conscious awareness’.^[27] The episodic buffer allows individuals to use integrated units of information they already have to imagine new concepts. Since this is likely ‘an attention-demanding process… the buffer would depend heavily on the Central Executive’.^[27] The main motivation for introducing this component was the observation that some (in particular, highly intelligent) patients with amnesia, who presumably have no ability to encode new information in long-term memory, nevertheless have good short-term recall of stories, recalling much more information than could be held in the phonological loop.^[29]. ‘The episodic buffer appears… capable of storing bound features and making them available to conscious awareness but not itself responsible for the process of binding'” – WIKIPEDIA, (bold highlighting added by Jeff Sexton)

In other words, our brains have a separate, special capacity for thinking in stories, and it is only through these narratives — i.e., “integrated units of visual, spatial, and verbal information with time sequencing — to imagine new concepts. 

Or as Roy puts it: the body goes only where the mind has already been. 

We simulate putting new ideas and opportunities into action through story. 
You can smell a new smell without a story.
You can taste a new taste without a story.
And you can think a new thought without a story.

But you can’t understand that this new smell and taste came from the whiskey your friend brought you back from Scotland without a story. 

What ties working memory to long term memory is the episodic buffer — that part of working memory specifically designed to handle story.

Pretty huge, IMO.

What do y’all think?
– Jeff Sexton, a Wizard of Ads partner