STM

abbreviation

1

[New Latin sacrae theologiae magister] master of sacred theology

2

scanning tunneling microscope; scanning tunneling microscopy

3

short-term memory

Medical Definition

STM

abbreviation

short-term memory

STM, then, is labile, and in the normal course of events, decays over a period of minutes to hours. If the item to be recalled is not, over this period, transferred from STM to LTM, it is irretrievably lost as STM decays.

—Steven Rose, in The Oxford Companion to the Mind