Patients may exhibit many different forms of cognitive vulnerabilities. The areas where cognitive vulnerabilities take on an important form is when there is a strong need for patients' active participation in medical decision making. Oftentimes, in the discussion of medical decision making there is limited discussion of cognitive processes after the decision is made. And these after-the-fact cognitive processes fall under the rubric of memory. Memory is defined as the processes in both living and nonliving entities that acquire, store, and retrieve information. Two areas where memory plays a key role in medical decision making are in consent and informed consent in clinical care and informed consent in research on humans.