1 Exam Flashcards
Test Thursday
What are some of the cognitive functions that are damaged?
Memory, language, and perception
What do they study?
Genetics,astronomy,congitive science, mutations supernovas and connive deficits.
What are the basic cognitive functions?
Visual perception&object recognition
Language comprehension &production
Memory
Spatial cognition
Motor control
What were the patient name that had carbon monoxide?
What is goodie et al.(1991)
What is Neurotypical?
Neurological normal control patients
What is orientation task?
Is required to the responding shapes sizes of rectangular wooden block?
What is shape/size task?
To put the blocks into the place?
What did goodie al(1991) did with her hand?
She had turn her hand orientation bad and cannot put the card she was very slow.
What is Milner et al(1999)? What were the 3 main points?
Patient AT
* brain damage from cerebral hemorrhage
* Neurotypical control participants
* Tested on pointing to a visual target
* AT is impaired: optic ataxia
What is optic Ataxia?
He was always very fair away(from the dot)
What were the two conditions?
Immediate(points when the light is on)
Delayed(target then goes off delayed)
Question: Why does Coltheart (1997) consider cognitive neuropsychology a branch of cognitive psychology rather than neuropsychology?
Answer: Coltheart argues that cognitive neuropsychology focuses on understanding the mind’s structure and processes, using evidence from brain-injured patients to make inferences about normal cognitive functions. Therefore, it aligns more with cognitive psychology, which studies mental functions, than with neuropsychology, which emphasizes the brain’s structure and its relationship to behavior.
Focus on Brain-Injured Patients: Evidence from patients with brain injuries is crucial for cognitive neuropsychology. It uses these cases to infer how typical cognitive functions work by observing which aspects of cognition are disrupted.
Link to Cognitive Psychology: The approach is more closely aligned with cognitive psychology because both fields focus on understanding mental processes (e.g., memory, language, perception) rather than on the physical brain itself.
Distinction from Neuropsychology: Coltheart argues that traditional neuropsychology is more concerned with understanding the brain’s anatomy and its connections to behavior, whereas cognitive neuropsychology looks at how specific mental functions break down due to localized brain damage.
Modularity Hypothesis: Coltheart supports the idea that cognitive functions are modular, meaning distinct processes in the mind can be individually affected by brain damage, which helps in mapping out the architecture of cognition.
Double Dissociation: The use of double dissociation—where two patients show opposite patterns of cognitive impairment—helps in identifying independent cognitive systems and further differentiates cognitive neuropsychology from neuropsychology, which tends to focus on broader correlations between brain areas and behavior.
Question: What are the two complementary goals of cognitive neuropsychology according to Coltheart (1997)?
To Understand the Functional Architecture of Normal Cognitive Processes:
The first goal focuses on discovering how various cognitive processes, such as perception, memory, language, and attention, are organized within the mind. This involves determining how these processes are divided into distinct modules or systems that handle specific tasks (e.g., processing visual information, understanding speech, or forming new memories). Cognitive neuropsychologists aim to develop models that explain how these systems work in a normal, healthy brain, including how they interact with one another. The ultimate goal is to reveal the underlying “architecture” or structure that supports all cognitive functions.
For example, in studying language processing, researchers might want to know how different regions of the brain contribute to understanding and producing language, and how these processes are separated or integrated. By mapping out these systems in a healthy mind, cognitive neuropsychologists build a framework for understanding typical cognition.
To Use Cognitive Models of Normal Function to Explain Impaired Cognitive Abilities in Brain-Damaged Patients:
The second goal is to apply these models of normal cognitive function to better understand and explain the cognitive impairments that result from brain damage. By comparing a brain-damaged patient’s performance to the expected normal functioning, cognitive neuropsychologists can pinpoint where and how the damage has disrupted cognitive processes.
For instance, if a patient with brain damage has difficulty recognizing faces (a condition called prosopagnosia), the cognitive neuropsychologist would use their model of face recognition in a healthy brain to figure out which part of the cognitive system is impaired. By understanding the normal architecture of face processing, they can identify the specific cognitive function that has been disrupted by the brain injury. This approach not only helps explain the patient’s difficulties but also allows researchers to refine their models of normal cognitive processes by observing how damage affects specific systems
Answer: The two goals are: 1) To understand the functional architecture of normal cognitive processes, and 2) To use cognitive models of normal function to explain impaired cognitive abilities in brain-damaged patients.
Question: Do Ellis & Young (1988) agree with Coltheart about the goals of cognitive neuropsychology?
Agreement:
Common Goal: Both Ellis & Young and Coltheart agree that cognitive neuropsychology seeks to understand normal cognitive processes by studying cognitive impairments in brain-damaged individuals. They both use evidence from these impairments to make inferences about how the mind’s cognitive systems are structured in healthy people.
Use of Cognitive Models: Both emphasize the importance of cognitive models to explain the functioning of the mind. They use these models to describe both normal cognition and the impairments caused by brain damage.
Differences:
Emphasis on Brain Structures: Where they diverge slightly is in their emphasis on the relationship between cognitive models and brain structures. Coltheart tends to focus more on the architecture of cognitive processes themselves, sometimes independent of specific brain regions. His approach is more about understanding the “mental architecture” rather than pinpointing where in the brain these processes occur.
In contrast, Ellis & Young place more importance on connecting cognitive models to the physical structures of the brain. They are more focused on the brain-behavior relationship and how specific cognitive deficits relate to damage in particular brain areas. This brings their approach closer to traditional neuropsychology, which tends to prioritize anatomical localization.
——————————————————-
Yes, Ellis & Young agree that cognitive neuropsychology aims to understand normal cognitive functioning through the study of cognitive impairments. They also emphasize the use of cognitive models to explain both normal and impaired functioning.
Question: What distinction do Ellis & Young (1988) draw between modes of explanation on pp. 3-4?
Descriptive Explanations: These explanations focus on identifying and describing patterns of behavior or cognitive deficits in patients without necessarily explaining why these patterns occur. They are observational in nature and are used to categorize behaviors, such as listing the symptoms a brain-damaged patient exhibits or describing how a patient performs on certain cognitive tasks. While useful, descriptive explanations do not delve into the underlying mechanisms responsible for these behaviors.
Causal Explanations: In contrast, causal explanations aim to uncover the underlying mechanisms that cause the observed behavior or deficits. In cognitive neuropsychology, the emphasis is on understanding why certain cognitive impairments occur and how they relate to specific disruptions in normal cognitive processes. Researchers use cognitive models to explain the causal relationships between brain damage and impaired function, linking these deficits to particular cognitive systems or structures within the mind.
Answer: Ellis & Young distinguish between descriptive explanations, which simply describe patterns of behavior, and causal explanations, which attempt to explain the underlying mechanisms causing these behaviors. In cognitive neuropsychology, the predominant mode of explanation is causal, as researchers seek to understand the underlying cognitive mechanisms.
What is the key assumption of modularity in cognitive neuropsychological research according to Ellis & Young (1988)?
Modularity is the assumption that cognitive functions are divided into independent, specialized units or modules that can operate separately. This assumption is crucial because it allows researchers to infer which cognitive systems are impaired based on the types of deficits observed in brain-damaged patients.
What is a dissociation in cognitive neuropsychology?
A dissociation occurs when a patient has a selective impairment in one cognitive function but retains another intact, suggesting these functions are supported by separate neural systems.
What is a double dissociation in cognitive neuropsychology?
Answer: A double dissociation is when two patients show opposite patterns of impairment, where Patient A can perform Task 1 but not Task 2, and Patient B can perform Task 2 but not Task 1. This provides stronger evidence that the two tasks rely on different cognitive systems.
Example of Double Dissociation:
Patient A: Suffers from brain damage that affects language comprehension but not speech production. This means Patient A can speak fluently (performing Task 1: speech production) but struggles to understand spoken language (cannot perform Task 2: language comprehension).
Patient B: Suffers from brain damage that affects speech production but not language comprehension. This means Patient B can understand spoken language (performing Task 2: language comprehension) but has difficulty producing fluent speech (cannot perform Task 1: speech production).
This complementary pattern of impairment (one patient impaired in comprehension but not speech production, and the other patient impaired in speech production but not comprehension) provides strong evidence that speech production and language comprehension are handled by distinct cognitive systems or processes.
Question: What is an association in cognitive neuropsychology?
Answer: An association is when two cognitive functions are impaired together in a patient, suggesting they might rely on the same or overlapping cognitive processes or systems.
How do Ellis & Young (1988) evaluate dissociations, double dissociations, and associations as evidence in cognitive neuropsychology?
Answer: Ellis & Young argue that dissociations provide evidence for the independence of cognitive systems, but double dissociations offer even stronger evidence. Associations are more difficult to interpret, as they could indicate shared systems or simply co-occurring damage.
Question: What is the main difference between cognitive neuropsychology and neuropsychology?
Answer: Cognitive neuropsychology is a branch of cognitive psychology, not neuropsychology. It focuses on understanding how cognitive functions operate, often using data from brain-damaged individuals to test cognitive theories. Neuropsychology, on the other hand, studies brain-behavior relationships, focusing on how brain lesions affect behaviors.
What is the primary aim of cognitive neuropsychology?
The primary aim of cognitive neuropsychology is to use data from individuals with cognitive impairments to test, extend, or develop theories about normal cognitive functions. These theories are then used to explain patterns of preserved and impaired abilities in brain-damaged individuals.
How do cognitive neuropsychologists differ from neuropsychologists in their approach to brain-damaged patients?
Cognitive neuropsychologists focus on studying cognition itself, using brain-damaged individuals to understand how specific cognitive functions work. They do not study the brain or brain-cognition relationships directly, whereas neuropsychologists focus on how specific brain areas relate to behavior and cognition.
What is developmental cognitive neuropsychology?
Developmental cognitive neuropsychology studies developmental disorders of cognition, where individuals fail to acquire certain cognitive abilities normally. It uses theories about how cognitive abilities are normally learned to understand and address these developmental failures
How does cognitive neuropsychology contribute to cognitive-neuropsychological assessment?
Cognitive neuropsychology provides theories about the processes underlying specific cognitive functions. These theories guide the development of assessment batteries, which test each component process to evaluate cognitive impairments more thoroughly.
What is the role of cognitive neuropsychology in rehabilitation?
In cognitive-neuropsychological rehabilitation, particularly in the restoration approach, the goal is to reinstate or target specific cognitive processes that have been lost or are difficult to acquire. This requires a detailed understanding of the processes that underlie normal cognitive functions.
What is cognitive neuropsychiatry?
Cognitive neuropsychiatry interprets psychiatric disorders, like schizophrenia or autism, as specific impairments of high-level cognitive abilities, such as “theory of mind.” It uses cognitive neuropsychological methods to investigate these psychiatric conditions.
The use of data from people with impairments of cognition to test, extend or develop theories
about how the particular cognitive task in question is normally carried out; and the use of such
theories to understand and explain the particular patterns of preserved and impaired abilities
seen in such people.
What is developmental cognitive neuropsychology?
Answer: Developmental cognitive neuropsychology focuses on developmental disorders of cognition, where individuals fail to acquire specific cognitive abilities normally, rather than losing them due to brain damage. It uses theories about how cognitive abilities are typically learned to understand and address these developmental issues.
Cognitive-neuropsychological assessmen
one has a theory about what the set of processes is
by which we normally accomplish a particular cognitive task, this automatically provides ideas
about how to assess impairments of the ability to perform this task. Assessment batteries
containing separate tests of each of these component processes are what is needed. Cognitive
neuropsychology makes proposals as to what these component processes actually are
Question: What cognitive impairment did PH suffer after his accident, despite other abilities being intact?
Question: What cognitive impairment did PH suffer after his accident, despite other abilities being intact?
Answer: PH experienced prosopagnosia, or an inability to recognize familiar faces. He could determine general features like age and gender but could not recognize people by their faces alone. He identified familiar individuals once they spoke.
hat aspects of PH’s cognitive abilities were preserved after his accident
PH’s language abilities, short-term memory, and verbal IQ (91) were preserved. He could read without difficulty and remembered things important to his daily life, although he performed poorly on formal long-term memory tests.
What is prosopagnosia, as observed in PH’s case?
Prosopagnosia is a condition where an individual is unable to recognize familiar faces. In PH’s case, although he could distinguish general features of a face (e.g., age, gender), he could not identify familiar people by sight and only recognized them once they spoke.
What is the axis Transvers? Sagittal and coronal?
You lookin in the middle of the brain, sagittal is on the side and corral is like the back,
EST, a 65-year-old well-educated man.
Condition: Anomia caused by a slow-growing tumor in the left hemisphere, removed when he was 53.
Difficulties:
Severe word-finding issues for common words like “piano,” “spider,” and “lamp.”
Constant “tip of the tongue” state.
Could not recall words for everyday objects, despite recognizing and understanding them.
Good comprehension of both spoken and written language.
Speech and reading aloud were impaired by word-finding problems.
what are other disorders
Object recognition, spatial
knowledge and orientation, speech comprehension, reading, writing, and
memory
What is Cognitive Psychology?
Cognitive psychology (without the neuro- prefix) is the study of those
mental processes which underlie and make possible our everyday ability
to recognise familiar objects and familiar people, to find our way around
in the world, to speak, read and write, to plan and execute actions, to
think, make decisions and remember
What are assortment?
associations between symp
toms. 1t is common in neuropsychology to discover that patients who are
impaired on task ‘l are also typically impaired on tasks 3, 4 and 5. Now,
it might be that ‘this association of deficits occurs because a cognitive
process required for the successful execution of task 1 is also required for
the successful execution of tasks 3, 4 and 5, so that a patient in whom
that process is damaged wiU experience problems with all these tasks.
According to Coltheart (1997), cognitive neuropsychology is a branch of
cognitive psychology @
cognitive neuroscience
neuropsychology
all of the above
the _______ hypothesis states that cognitive functions like reading or object recognition are carried out by the orchestrated activity of multiple independent processors, each carrying out a specific, relatively simple, sub-part of the overall function.
componentiality
compositionality
modality
Correct!
modularity
Cognitive neuropsychology falls into the category of scientific research that
studies diseases to find cures
Correct!
studies atypical situations or processes to understand typical situations or processes @
is descriptive rather than explanatory
What do cognitive neuropsychologists assume about the relationship between cognitive tasks (such as reading a word aloud, or solving a multi-digit multiplication problem) and cognitive processes carried out in the brain?
for each task, there is a cognitive process that performs the entire task and only that task
each task if performed by a collection of cognitive processes, all of which are used only for that task
Correct!
each task is performed by multiple cognitive processes, and each process may play a role in performing multiple tasks
each cognitive process performs many entire tasks
Which of these tasks require mental representations and computations?
signing your name
taking a photograph with your phone
flipping a light switch
recognizing a face
all of the above
all of the above
what are the types of articles?
empirical articles: report new findings & conclusions
* review articles: review previous findings
* theoretical articles: propose/discuss theories
what does the articles in reputable Journal do?
articles in reputable journals have been peer-reviewed
* provides quality control, but not a guarantee that research was done
properly or that conclusions are correct
What should you pay attention to readings?
in reading articles pay attention to
* theoretical questions
* how tasks or experiments are supposed to answer the
questions
* evidence
* theoretical conclusions
* argument linking the evidence to the conclusions
What is in the introduction?
- topic
- specific issues/questions
- previous research
- preview of methods, results,
conclusions
Standard Article Format
Milner et al. (1999)
What are discussions
- summary of results
- interpretation: use results to draw
conclusions about theoretical questions - broader implications
- article may include multiple experiments,
each with Introduction, Methods, Results,
Discussion, followed by General Discussion
at end
what is abstract?
ten combined with first
paragraph of introduction
Introduction, Method, Results,
Discussion
* may not be separated into
sections with headings
* typically less detailed than in
longer journal article
* figure captions often contain
much of the method
DF’s Performance:Goodale et al. (1991)
Patient DF
Task DF’s Performance
choose which of 4 lines matches orientation of slot grossly impaired
turn hand-held card to match slot grossly verbally indicate orientation of rectangular block grossly impaired
‘post’ card through slot
All impaired expect the last one
Goodale et al. (1991)
Patient DF who was she?
The patient that moved her hands.
Judge same or different for rectangular plaques
open thumb & index finger to indicate plaque width
reach out and pick up plaque
All growsly impaired expet the last one.
Using Goodale et. Al(1991) what had they believed in?
wo separate visual subsystems in brain
1) system for conscious perceptual judgments (vision-for-
perception)
2) system for automatic visual guidance of skilled actions
(vision-for-action)
How are system distinguished?
- not by the types of visual information they process
- but instead by how they use visual information
We propose that for DF
vision-for-perception system impaired
* vision-for-action system intact
* As a consequence, DF is
* impaired on tasks probing vision-for-perception
* normal on tasks probing vision-for-action
* If we don’t assume the distinction between
perception and action systems, we have no obvious
way to explain DF’s performance
What are the normal vision and Goodale/Milner Conception
the difference between them? Write them down.
Hammer->Visual sytem->shape, size,color->Object recognition and language, and action
Their hypothesis:
Hammer->early vision->vision for perception->object recognition and language
early vision->vision for action->Reaching and grasping
Milner et al. (1999)
Patient AT?
Who was he? What were the results when he went slow and fast?
What is vision for action system and vision for perception system based on at?
vIsion-for-action system
* provides precise information for online control of
reaching/pointing movements
* but cannot retain information for longer than about 2
seconds
Vision-for-perception system
* provides less precise location information
* but can retain information over time
What were the results of AT compared to normal individuals using the Vision-for-action and vision-for-perception.
In normal individuals
* vision-for-action system controls pointing in immediate task
→ high accuracy
* vision-for-perception system controls pointing in delayed task
→ slightly lower accuracy
In AT
* the vision-for-action system is impaired
* but AT still uses this system in the immediate task → very
large errors
* in the delayed task AT uses the vision-for-perception system
→ smaller (but still abnormally large) errors
* so vision-for-perception system must also be somewhat
impaired
What about DF patient results?
Task DF’s Performance
Immediate: point while target is present normal
Delayed: point 10 seconds after target turned off impaired
Did the outcome differ between conditions?
- seems like a simple question
- AT: pointing errors smaller in the delayed condition than in
the immediate condition - therefore, seems obvious that difference in delay caused a
difference in pointing accuracy - but actually not so simple
- suppose that AT’s ability to point to a visual target is
exactly the same for immediate and delayed pointing - would we expect her average error to be exactly the
same in the immediate and delayed conditions of the
experiment? - clearly not
Observed difference by chance
What do we do in Experiments?
Experiments are procedures for drawing causal conclusions
* in an experiment
* we manipulate some variable to create a difference between 2 (or
more) situations, or ‘conditions’
* determine whether the difference between conditions causes a
difference in some outcome
ABBA design
Experimental design in which two different tasks (A and B) are presented in the
order A, B, B, A, to minimize effects of order of task presentatio
achromatopsia. Impaired color vision. For the usage in the Milner et al. article, the correct term
is
cerebral achromatopsia, which refers specifically to impaired color vision resulting
from damage to the brain (as opposed to the more common forms of color blindness,
which result from defects affecting the cones in the retina).
agnosia.
deficit in which the patient is impaired in recognizing objects or other stimuli.
alexia.
. Impairment in reading.
Balint’s syndrome.
collection of symptoms, including optic ataxia and simultanagnosia,
that may result from bilateral damage to the parietal lobes.
bilateral.
ffecting both sides (of the brain), as in bilateral lesion
cortical blindness
Blindness resulting from damage to the visual areas of the brain, as opposed
to blindness resulting from damage to the eyes or to the pathways from eye to brain.
dissociation (or single dissociation
attern of results in which one task or cognitive ability
(e.g., ability to recognize faces) shows impairment, while another task or ability (e.g.,
ability to recognize objects) is intact, or at least much less impaired
Ipsilatera,Lesion, Motor
issociation (or single dissociation). Pattern of results in which one task or cognitive ability
(e.g., ability to recognize faces) shows impairment, while another task or ability (e.g.,
ability to recognize objects) is intact, or at least much less impaired.
ipsilateral. On the same side. Contrasts with contralateral (which means on the opposite side).
lesion. General term for tissue damage. A brain lesion is a site of damage in the brain.
motor. Adjective referring to movement; thus, the motor system is the set of brain regions,
nerves, and muscles involved in producing movements.
medial
Toward the center or middle
Neural substrate.
The brain tissue that underlies some ability, as in the neural substrate for face
recognition is probably in ventral posterior regions of the brain
Optic ataxia.
Inaccurate reaching for a visual target when the inaccuracy cannot be attributed to
a purely visual or purely motor deficit
Perspex.
. Plexiglass
Prehension
The act of taking hold or grasping with the hand
prosopagnosia.
Impairment in the ability to recognize faces, not due simply to poor visio
saccade,
sagittal.
simultagnosia (or simultanagnosia).
saccade (or saccadic eye movement). An eye movement in which the eyes jump quickly from
one position to another, as when looking from one object to another. One of two major
forms of eye movement (the other is smooth pursuit, in which the eyes continually track a
moving object).
sagittal. Referring to the plane that divides a structure into left and right parts (not necessarily
halves).
scotoma. A blind area in the visual field.
simultagnosia (or simultanagnosia). A visual deficit in which the patient may be able to see
and recognize details of an object or scene, but cannot put them together to perceive the ntire object or scene. Alternatively, may refer to a visual deficit in which the patient can
only perceive one object at a time even when multiple objects are within the visual field.
tactile,transcranial magetic stimulation (TMS).visual agnosia.,visual form agnosia,visuomotor control,visuospatial., and whole-body locomotion
tactile. Adjective referring to touch.
transcranial magetic stimulation (TMS). Non-invasive procedure for creating temporary
disruption of functioning in a restricted brain area, by applying one or more brief
magnetic pulses via a coil positioned near the scalp over the targeted brain area.
visual agnosia. A deficit in recognizing visually-presented objects or other stimuli.
visual form agnosia. Visual agnosia resulting from impairment in perceiving the shapes and/or
other visual properties (e.g., texture, orientation) of objects.
visuomotor control. Use of visual information to guide movement, as when reaching for a
visible object.
visuospatial. Adjective referring to tasks, abilities, or cognitive processes that involve spatial
information obtained through vision. For example, judging whether two lines presented
on a computer are parallel or converging would be a visuospatial task.
whole-body locomotion. Walking or running.
Flashcard: Testing Patient DF’s Ability to Use Visual Information about Orientation
Key Task 1: Posting Task
Description: DF was asked to insert a card into a slot at various orientations.
Findings: DF could not verbally describe or perceive the orientation of the slot but could correctly orient the card to post it into the slot.
Conclusion: DF’s visuomotor actions (using visual information for action) were intact, despite her perceptual impairment
Key Task 2: Matching Task
Description: DF was asked to rotate a handheld card to match the orientation of a visible slot (no posting).
Findings: DF performed poorly, unable to correctly match the card’s orientation to the slot.
Conclusion: DF’s perceptual knowledge of orientation was impaired.
Tasks on Which Patient DF Performed Well:
Description: DF was asked to insert a card into a slot presented at different orientations.
Performance: DF performed well on this task, correctly orienting the card to match the slot and “posting” it successfully, despite being unable to consciously describe the orientation of the slot.
Conclusion: This demonstrated that DF’s dorsal stream (responsible for visually guided actions) was intact, allowing her to use visual information for motor actions even though her conscious perception was impaire
On which tasks was she impaired?Df
On the perception of hand.
What tasks were used to test DF’s ability to use visual information about the sizes of objects, and what were the outcomes?
erceptual Size Judgment Task:
DF was asked to estimate the size of objects.
Outcome: Performed poorly, showing impaired conscious perception of object size.
Grasping Task:
DF had to grasp objects of different sizes.
Outcome: Successfully adjusted her grip aperture to the size of objects, demonstrating intact visuomotor control.
Posting Task (Slot Task):
DF was asked to post a card through a slot of varying orientations.
Outcome: Could not verbally describe the slot’s orientation but could accurately post the card, showing her ability to use visual information for action.
5) Tasks on Which Patient DF Performed Well:
Posting Task:
Description: DF was asked to insert a card into a slot presented at various orientations.
Performance: DF performed well on this task, correctly orienting the card to match the slot and successfully posting it, despite being unable to consciously describe the orientation.
Conclusion: This showed that her dorsal stream (responsible for guiding actions) was intact, allowing her to perform visuomotor tasks accurately.
6) Tasks on Which Patient DF Was Impaired:
Matching Task:
Description: DF was asked to rotate a card to match the orientation of a visible slot, but without inserting it.
Performance: DF was impaired, unable to accurately match the orientation of the card to the slot.
Conclusion: This indicated a deficit in her ventral stream, which is responsible for conscious visual perception of orientation.
What interpretation do the authors offer for DF’s task performance results?
The authors interpret DF’s results as evidence for the two-stream hypothesis of visual processing:
Ventral Stream (What Pathway) Impairment:
DF’s inability to consciously perceive object size, shape, or orientation is due to damage to her ventral stream, which is responsible for object recognition and visual perception.
Dorsal Stream (How Pathway) Intact:
DF’s preserved ability to grasp objects and perform visuomotor tasks despite her perceptual deficits is due to the intact dorsal stream, which guides actions based on visual information.
This suggests that perception and action rely on separate visual pathways in the brain.
What tasks were administered to patient AT and control participants?
Pointing Task with Immediate Feedback:
Description: In this task, both AT and control participants were asked to point to a visual target using a hand or pointer. They received immediate visual feedback of their pointing action, meaning they could see their movements in real time.
Purpose: This task assesses baseline pointing accuracy without any delay, allowing a comparison with how the participants perform under normal conditions.
Pointing Task with Delayed Feedback:
Description: In this task, AT and control participants were asked to point to a target, but the visual feedback was delayed by a specific time interval (e.g., 200 ms or more). They could see the results of their pointing action only after the delay, preventing them from relying on real-time adjustments.
Purpose: This task tests the ability to maintain pointing accuracy when real-time feedback is unavailable, allowing researchers to investigate how participants compensate for the lack of immediate visual information.
Matching Task:
Description: In this task, participants were asked to match the orientation of a handheld object or a pointer with a visual target (similar to DF’s task but likely focused on orientation or spatial matching).
Purpose: This task assesses perceptual abilities to align objects or point accurately without requiring any specific motor actions
What was the pattern of results for control participants?
Immediate Feedback Condition:
Performance: Control participants performed very well, with low error rates.
Outcome: High accuracy due to the ability to use real-time visual feedback to adjust movements.
Delayed Feedback Condition:
Performance: Control participants showed increased pointing errors and poorer accuracy.
Outcome: Difficulty adjusting to delays in visual feedback, leading to overcorrections or undercorrections. The longer the delay, the greater the error
Flashcard: Pattern of Results for Patient AT
Immediate Feedback Condition:
Performance: AT performed less accurately than controls, with more pointing errors.
Outcome: Impaired ability to use real-time visual feedback, showing greater error than control participants.
elayed Feedback Condition:
Performance: AT showed fewer errors in the delayed condition compared to the immediate condition.
Outcome: AT’s accuracy improved with delayed feedback, likely due to reliance on a different motor control strategy.
What was the pattern for patient DF?
Perception Tasks (e.g., Matching Task):
Performance: DF performed poorly, unable to accurately match or describe the orientation of objects.
Outcome: DF was impaired in tasks requiring conscious visual perception of object orientation.
Action Tasks (e.g., Posting Task):
Performance: DF performed well, accurately posting a card into a slot at various orientations.
Outcome: DF’s ability to perform visually guided actions was intact, demonstrating preserved dorsal stream function.
Flashcard: Interpretation of Patient DF’s Results by Authors
Two Visual Pathways (Two-Streams Hypothesis):
Ventral Stream (“What” Pathway):
Responsible for object recognition and conscious visual perception.
DF’s impairment in tasks like matching orientation is due to damage in this stream.
Pathway runs from the occipital lobe to the temporal lobe.
Dorsal Stream (“Where/How” Pathway):
Responsible for visuomotor control, guiding actions based on spatial information.
DF’s intact performance in tasks like posting a card is linked to preserved dorsal stream function.
Pathway runs from the occipital lobe to the parietal lobe.
Dissociation Between Perception and Action:
Perception (ventral stream) and action (dorsal stream) rely on different neural pathways.
DF’s ability to act (post card) despite being unable to perceive orientation shows a functional separation between these streams.
Visually guided actions can occur without conscious recognition of objects.
Functional Independence of the Dorsal Stream:
The dorsal stream can operate independently of the ventral stream, allowing DF to perform actions without conscious perception.
Motor control systems can use spatial information for actions without requiring explicit object recognition.
Implications for Visual Agnosia:
DF’s case shows that visual agnosia involves specific impairments in conscious perception (ventral stream), while action-related vision (dorsal stream) may remain intact.
The case challenges the idea that visual agnosia involves global visual deficits and supports the view of separate neural mechanisms for perception and action.
Summary:
DF’s case supports the two-streams hypothesis, highlighting a clear division between the ventral stream (perception) and the dorsal stream (action).
This case illustrates how visuomotor control can remain functional despite significant conscious visual recognition deficits
What is the balitiant syndrome?
Ba ̈lint’s syndrome, including visual disorientation, simultagnosia
and severe optic ataxia for targets in her peripheral visual ¢eld.
What D.F tested on the Milners Et AL?
Yeah, she was study and they found out that she been working normally under the first circumstance of rapid eye tracke and pointing, when delayed she had gone absolutely wrong. Supporting the hypothesis created by the Df results.
Her parietal lobes were damaged.
Peer review is the practice in which experts on the topic of an article ?
Write critical commentaries after the article is published
provide written evaluations of an article before it is accepted for publication @@
certify that the results and conclusions of the article are unquestionably valid
provide brief statements that endorse the article and are published along with the article
Which of the following is likely to be found in the Methods section of an article?
a description of the procedures used in testing the participants
a description of any specialized equipment used in the study
a description of the stimuli (such as words or pictures) presented to participants
All@
Which section of a research article is most likely to include a review of prior research on the research topic?
Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion
The section of an article that provides a brief summary of the questions, methods, results, and conclusions is called the ?
overview
precis
abstract ###
Patient DF was tested on a ‘posting’ task. This task involved?
Touching a target location on a screen
Correct!
inserting a card into a slot
inserting small wooden sticks into holes
uploading a photo to a social media site
In the study of patient DF, the posting task was used to probe the ability of the ______ system to use information about ______.
vision-for-perception/shape
vision-for-perception/orientation
vision-for-action/shape
Correct!
vision-for-action/orientatio
In the study of patient DF, the posting task was used to probe the ability of the ______ system to use information about ______.
vision-for-perception/shape
vision-for-perception/orientation
vision-for-action/shape
Correct!
n an experiment we have not discussed, Goodale & Milner’s patient DF walked through a sort of obstacle course in which she needed to step over blocks of different heights. She performed normally, raising her foot an appropriate distance for each block—in other words, raising her foot higher for tall blocks than for short blocks. However, when she was shown pairs of the blocks and asked to say which one was taller, she was very inaccurate.
This pattern of performance is an example of a(n)
association
double association
Correct!
dissociation
double dissaciation
We would expect Goodale & Milner to interpret the result by proposing that walking the obstacle course involved the ________ system, whereas judging which of two blocks was taller required the ______ system
vision-for-perception/vision-for-action
Correct!
vision-for-action/vision-for-perception
spatial-vision/object-vision
object-vision/spatial-vision
The grip aperture of a person reaching out to pick up an object is
the places that are grasped on the object
the force exerted on the object by the person’s grasp
the orientation of a line drawn from finger to thumb on the reaching hand
Correct!
the distance between finger and thumb on the reaching hand
Milner et al. (1999) found that patient AT’s reaching accuracy was higher when she was forced to wait 5 seconds after the target light went off before reaching (delayed condition), than when she reached while the target light was on (immediate condition). The researchers interpreted these results by assuming that
the 5-second delay gave an impaired vision-for-action system enough time to determine the location of the target
an impaired vision-for-perception system interfered with the normal vision-for-action system in immediate reaching, but not in delayed reaching
Correct!
an impaired vision-for-action system controlled reaching in the immediate condition, but the more-intact vision-for-perception system took over in the delayed condition
the 5-second delay gave the perception and action systems time to work together, producing better performance than either system could achieve alone
Hillis & Caramazza (1989) studied a patient (ML) with a spelling deficit resulting from a stroke. When they compared the words ML spelled correctly with those she misspelled, here is what they found: ‘The mean length of correctly-spelled words was 4.62 letters, and the mean length of misspelled words was 5.52 letters (t = 8.12; p < .0001).’ What can we conclude from this sentence?
Correct!
the probability that the length difference between correctly-spelled and mis-spelled words was due to chance is less than 1 in 10,000
the probability that the length difference was due to chance is 8.12 in 10,000
the probability that ML spells short words more accurately than long words is less than 1 in 10,000
the probability that ML spells short words more accurately than long words is 8.12 in 10,000
Hillis & Caramazza (1989) studied a patient (ML) with a spelling deficit resulting from a stroke. When they compared the words ML spelled correctly with those she misspelled, here is what they found: ‘The mean length of correctly-spelled words was 4.62 letters, and the mean length of misspelled words was 5.52 letters (t = 8.12; p < .0001).’ What can we conclude from this sentence?
Correct!
the probability that the length difference between correctly-spelled and mis-spelled words was due to chance is less than 1 in 10,000
the probability that the length difference was due to chance is 8.12 in 10,000
the probability that ML spells short words more accurately than long words is less than 1 in 10,000
the probability that ML spells short words more accurately than long words is 8.12 in 10,000
An article by Hamann and Squire (1997), which we will read later in the course, describes research with patient EP, who has a severe memory deficit. Hamann & Squire report differences between conditions for 2 tasks presented to EP, stem completion and perceptual identification. (The nature of the tasks doesn’t matter for this question.) The statistical test results reported for the tasks are as follows:
stem completion: t(5) = 2.63, p < .05
perceptual identification: t(11) = 4.66, p < .001
For which task was the difference between conditions more likely to have occurred due to chance?
Correct!
stem completion
perceptual identification
cannot be determined from the information given
For which task was the difference between conditions more likely to have occurred due to chance?
Correct!
stem completion
perceptual identification
cannot be determined from the information given
For which task were the results more scientifically important?
stem completion
perceptual identification
Correct!
cannot be determined from the information given
stem completion
perceptual identification
Correct!
cannot be determined from the information given
What can we learn about memory by studying
patients with profound memory impairments? Who are the people that we will use?
- Explore this question in the context of several cases
- Lonni Sue Johnson (LSJ)
- Henry Molaison (HM)
- EP
who is LSJ?
She had college education, had been 57 year old, and was an artist.owned farm with studio and airstrip
* flew her own plane
What did Sj obtained in 2007?What part of the brain were damaged? And what sickness did she had?
SJ
* Dec. 2007: herpes simplex encephalitis
* extremely ill and nearly died
* recovered, but with permanent brain damage
* severe bilateral medial temporal lobe damage
* damage to other brain areas, especially L
temporal
* profound amnesia
What is the process of memorizing?
processes
* forming memories
* retaining & retrieving stored memories
* amnesia may involve disruption of either or both
What is retrograde Amnesia?
Impaired memory for information acquired before onset of
disorder
* inability to retrieve memories stored prior to onset
* disruption of retention/retrieval
What is Anterograde Amnesia?
impaired memory for information encountered after onset of
disorder
* inability to form new memories that can subsequently be
retrieved
* disruption of memory formation
LsJ was general knowledge impaired?
General knowledge also impaired
What is this test Anterograde Memory: Warrington Recognition
Memory Test?
Faces
* 50 faces presented for 3 s each
* respond pleasant/unpleasant to each
* immediate recognition test
* pair of faces shown
* choose face seen previously
What did LSJ get from her test?
Average for normal adults
* Faces: 43/50
* Words: 43/50
* LSJ
* Faces: 28/50
* Words: 26/50
* not different from chance (guessing)
What are the types of test for retrograde?
Retrograde Memory: Famous Faces
* 60 photos of famous faces
* task: name the individual
Retrograde Memory: Famous Places Test
* 26 famous landmarks
* name or identify
LSJ test on pairings
amous Artists & Paintings Test
* multiple choice
* correct
* plausible incorrect
* implausible incorrect
* 31 of 63 correct
a. Jan Vermeer
b. Paul Cézanne
c. Vincent Van Gogh
What did LSJ had ?
LSJ has profound anterograde and retrograde
memory deficits
the deficits affect both
* autobiographical memory
* general knowledge, including knowledge in areas of
prior expertise
autobiographical memory.
Memory for one’s own life experiences.
episodic memory.
Memory for specific events that one has experienced, as opposed to
general knowledge
lexical semantic knowledge.
Knowledge of the meanings of words. ‘Lexical’ refers to
words, and ‘semantic’ to meaning
argets and foils.
In a multiple-choice test, the correct answer is sometimes called the
target, and incorrect answers are referred to as foils or distractors
parahippocampal, perirhinal, and entorhinal cortex.
These are medial temporal
cortical regions that are near the hippocampus and are important for various
aspects of memory.
Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS).
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS).
Rey-Osterrieth complex figure. A complex nonsense shape (see below) often used in
neuropsychological diagnosis.
Boston Naming Test.
Visual Object and Space Perception (VOSP) battery.
In the study of memory the terms recall and recognition
have technical meanings. The difference can be explained in the context of a task
in which participants study a list of words, and are later tested on their memory
for the words.
Recall refers to memory test
Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS). A battery of memory tests.
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). An intelligence test consisting of several
verbal and non-verbal tasks.
Rey-Osterrieth complex figure. A complex nonsense shape (see below) often used in
neuropsychological diagnosis. Participants are typically asked first to copy the
shape, and then to draw it again from memory a few minutes later.
Boston Naming Test. A test in which 60 pictures of objects (e.g., tree, abacus) are
presented one at a time, and the participant is asked to name each picture.
Visual Object and Space Perception (VOSP) battery. A set of tasks that test visual
perception and object recognition.
amusia. Impairment of music knowledge or skills.
recall and recognition tests. In the study of memory the terms recall and recognition
have technical meanings. The difference can be explained in the context of a task
in which participants study a list of words, and are later tested on their memory
for the words.
Recall refers to memory test procedures in which the participant is asked to
remember the studied items without being shown these items. If participants in
How does retrograde amnesia affect general world knowledge beyond famous people and public events?
The study explored whether retrograde amnesia causes broad memory loss across a variety of everyday knowledge domains, rather than just famous people or public events, including commercial logos, sports, and familiar songs.
Can retrograde amnesia cause profound memory loss in areas of personal expertise?
The study aimed to determine if retrograde amnesia could cause severe memory loss in areas where an individual has premorbid expertise (e.g., art, classical music, U.S. history) and whether this expert knowledge is more resilient or equally affected.
Is general world knowledge more or less affected than other types of memory in retrograde amnesia?
The study investigated whether general world knowledge (e.g., factual knowledge) is more or less impaired compared to other memory types like autobiographical memory or semantic memory in patients with retrograde amnesia.
How does damage to the medial temporal lobe affect the storage and retrieval of general world knowledge?
The study explored the role of the medial temporal lobe and related brain regions in storing and retrieving general world knowledge, particularly in patients like LSJ who sustained extensive damage in these areas.
Do personal areas of expertise offer any protection against retrograde memory loss?
The study examined whether areas of personal expertise, such as LSJ’s knowledge in art and music, were more resistant to memory loss due to their deeper, more frequent use, or if they were equally vulnerable as everyday knowledge in retrograde amnesia.
How the Study Went Beyond Previous Studies of Retrograde Amnesia:
Broader Range of Knowledge Domains:
Previous studies of retrograde amnesia focused primarily on famous people and public events, which are relatively narrow and time-specific aspects of memory.
This study went beyond by examining a wider variety of knowledge domains, including everyday knowledge (e.g., commercial logos, sports, and familiar songs) and premorbid expertise (e.g., art, classical music, and U.S. history). This allowed the researchers to explore whether retrograde memory loss extends across more comprehensive areas of general world knowledge.
In-Depth Examination of General World Knowledge:
Most studies concentrated on autobiographical memory or episodic memory, often neglecting general world knowledge (facts and knowledge accumulated over a lifetime).
This study examined general world knowledge in more depth, probing highly-overlearned knowledge and expertise that would have been accessed frequently throughout the individual’s life.
Testing Premorbid Expertise:
The study uniquely examined how retrograde amnesia affected areas of expertise that were personal and deeply rooted in the patient’s life, such as LSJ’s expertise in art and classical music. Previous studies rarely focused on this kind of highly specific expert knowledge, offering new insights into how specialized, highly-learned knowledge is impacted by amnesia.
Exploration of Memory Loss Across Time and Context:
Previous studies mostly examined knowledge that could be assumed to have been acquired during specific time periods (e.g., famous events), limiting their exploration of how memory loss might affect lifelong knowledge.
This study assessed knowledge acquired over a wide range of contexts and time periods, including facts and knowledge that would have been accessed frequently over decades, offering a richer understanding of how long-term memory is affected in retrograde amnesia.
Inclusion of Both Recall and Recognition Tasks:
Many previous studies relied heavily on either recall or recognition tasks but did not use both consistently.
This study incorporated both recall and recognition tests for each knowledge domain, providing a more thorough examination of LSJ’s memory performance across multiple forms of retrieval, and distinguishing between item recognition and memory for associations.
Types of Knowledge Examined in the Study: LSJ
Everyday Knowledge:
This category included common knowledge that individuals typically encounter and use throughout their daily lives. The study tested LSJ’s memory for:
Commercial Logos: Familiar logos for well-known companies, products, or organizations (e.g., McDonald’s golden arches).
Everyday Songs: Well-known musical pieces associated with specific events or occasions (e.g., “Happy Birthday” or “Auld Lang Syne”).
Sports: Basic knowledge about sports, including rules, equipment, teams, and famous athletes (e.g., “What city do the Red Sox come from?” or “What sport was Muhammad Ali famous for?”).
Premorbid Expertise (Personal Expertise):
These are areas in which LSJ had significant premorbid knowledge or expertise prior to her illness, and the study sought to assess the impact of retrograde amnesia on these specific domains:
Art: LSJ’s knowledge of famous paintings and their artists (e.g., recognizing works like Van Gogh’s Starry Night or Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus).
Classical Music: LSJ’s familiarity with classical musical compositions and their composers (e.g., Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik).
U.S. History: LSJ’s extensive knowledge of American history and government (e.g., “Who did the United States fight in World War II?” or recognizing U.S. Presidents).
Recognition and Recall of Famous People:
As part of the retrograde memory assessment, the study also tested LSJ’s ability to recognize famous faces and remember their names, which is commonly evaluated in studies of retrograde amnesia.
Autobiographical Memory:
The study included an assessment of LSJ’s autobiographical memory, asking her to recall specific events from her life (e.g., life events like attending a birthday party or graduating from high school).
What were the main results?
Profound Loss of General Knowledge Across All Domains:
LSJ exhibited severe retrograde amnesia across all knowledge domains tested, including both everyday knowledge and areas of premorbid expertise. Her performance was significantly worse than that of control participants in every domain.
Everyday Knowledge:
Commercial Logos: LSJ could only recall the names of a few companies when shown their logos. In the recognition task, she performed better than chance but was still significantly below the control group’s performance.
Everyday Songs: LSJ struggled to recall the names of well-known songs associated with specific occasions (e.g., “Happy Birthday”) and performed poorly on the recognition tasks compared to controls.
Sports: LSJ had considerable difficulty recalling and recognizing basic facts about sports, such as the rules of games, famous athletes, and team locations.
Premorbid Expertise:
Art: Despite being a professional illustrator, LSJ had significant deficits in recalling and recognizing famous paintings and their artists. She could only name a few artists, such as Da Vinci, and performed poorly even on the forced-choice recognition task.
Classical Music: Although LSJ was an amateur musician, she could not recall the names of composers of well-known classical pieces. Her performance on the recognition task was also at chance level.
U.S. History: Despite her premorbid knowledge of American history, LSJ performed poorly on both recall and recognition tasks, struggling with even basic historical facts and failing to recognize many U.S. Presidents.
Recognition of Famous Faces:
LSJ’s performance on the famous faces task was extremely poor. She was able to recognize only a few famous faces, scoring far below the control group’s average.
Autobiographical Memory:
LSJ demonstrated profound impairment in recalling specific autobiographical events from her life. She could not recall a single detailed personal episode, and her responses to questions about her past were vague and lacked specificity.
Spared Abilities:
LSJ’s vocabulary, visual-spatial cognition, and general intellectual abilities were largely intact. She scored normally on standardized tests of vocabulary and was able to draw an excellent copy of the Rey-Osterrieth complex figure, although her memory for the figure was completely impaired.
What conclusions did Gregory et al. draw from the results?
Retrograde Amnesia Can Cause Broad and Deep Memory Loss:
Gregory et al. concluded that retrograde amnesia can result in profound deficits across a wide range of general world knowledge domains, not just in the more commonly studied areas like famous people and public events. This extends to everyday knowledge (e.g., logos, songs, sports) and premorbid expertise (e.g., art, classical music, U.S. history).
General World Knowledge Is Vulnerable to Retrograde Amnesia:
The study demonstrated that even highly learned and frequently accessed knowledge, such as LSJ’s expertise in art and music, is vulnerable to retrograde memory loss. This finding contrasts with the expectation that overlearned knowledge might be more resistant to amnesia.
Temporal Lobe Damage Affects Multiple Knowledge Domains:
The authors suggested that damage to the medial temporal lobes and related brain areas, such as the anterior temporal lobes, plays a crucial role in the storage and retrieval of general world knowledge. LSJ’s extensive memory loss across diverse domains indicates that these brain areas are critical for long-term memory consolidation across various types of knowledge.
General World Knowledge and Lexical Knowledge Are Distinct:
LSJ’s preserved vocabulary but severely impaired world knowledge supports the idea that general world knowledge and lexical knowledge (knowledge of word meanings) are distinct. This dissociation suggests that different neural systems may support these two types of memory.
No Evidence of a Temporal Gradient:
The study found no evidence of a temporal gradient (the idea that older memories are better preserved than more recent ones), as LSJ’s memory loss was broad and extended across different time periods and contexts. This challenges the traditional view that retrograde amnesia follows a temporal gradient in all cases.
Item Familiarity vs. Memory for Associations:
The authors raised the possibility that LSJ’s impairment could involve not just the loss of memory for associations between items (e.g., associating a logo with a company) but also familiarity with the items themselves. Further research would be needed to clarify whether the deficits were more related to item recognition or the associations between items and their meanings.
priming
Change (usually improvement) in performance for a stimulus occurring due to
processing of some earlier stimulus (the prime)
What is recall and recognition?
ecall vs. recognition. In the study of memory the terms recall and recognition have
technical meanings. The difference can be explained in the context of a task in
which participants study a list of words, and are later tested on their memory for
the words.
Recall refers to memory test procedures in which the participant is asked to
remember the studied items without being shown these items. If participants in
the word list experiment were asked to write down as many of the words as they
could remember, this would be a recall procedure.
In recognition procedures the studied items are shown at the time of the test,
along with items that were not studied, and the participant is asked to indicate
which items were the studied. Suppose, for example, that after studying the word
list participants were shown pairs of words, each consisting of one studied word
and one non-studied word, and asked to indicate which word in each pair was the
studied word. This would be a forced-choice recognition procedure, or more
specifically a 2-alternative forced-choice procedure, because two items are
presented on each test trial. In a yes-no recognition procedure one item is
presented on each trial, and the participant must indicate whether it was a studied
item (yes) or a non-studied item (no
What theoretical positions were Hamann and Squire comparing in their study?
Question
Answer:
Standard Model of Systems Consolidation:
Suggests memories become independent of the hippocampus over time.
Predicts a temporal gradient in retrograde amnesia, with older memories better preserved because they have been consolidated in the cortex.
Multiple Trace Theory (MTT):
Argues that the hippocampus is always needed for the retrieval of episodic memories.
Suggests no temporal gradient in retrograde amnesia for episodic memories, meaning both recent and remote episodic memories will be impaired equally if the hippocampus is damaged.
Comparison:
Temporal Gradient vs. Uniform Loss: Hamann and Squire compared whether retrograde amnesia follows a temporal gradient (Standard Model) or results in uniform memory loss (MTT).
In their study, Hamann and Squire were comparing two main theoretical positions regarding retrograde amnesia and memory consolidation. These positions centered around how autobiographical memory and general knowledge (such as factual knowledge or semantic memory) are affected by brain damage, particularly focusing on whether memory loss follows a temporal gradient.
- Standard Model of Systems Consolidation:
This theory proposes that memories become independent of the hippocampus over time. Initially, the hippocampus is essential for encoding and retrieving both episodic (autobiographical) and semantic (factual) memories. However, over time, through a process called systems consolidation, these memories become stored in cortical regions, and their retrieval no longer requires the hippocampus.
According to this model, retrograde amnesia should exhibit a temporal gradient, with older memories being better preserved than more recent ones, since older memories have had more time to consolidate and transfer to cortical storage. - Multiple Trace Theory (MTT):
In contrast to the standard model, multiple trace theory (MTT) argues that the hippocampus is involved in the retrieval of episodic memories indefinitely, regardless of how old the memory is. Each time an episodic memory is recalled, a new trace is created in the hippocampus, reinforcing the memory over time but still requiring the hippocampus for retrieval.
According to MTT, retrograde amnesia should affect episodic memory uniformly, regardless of the memory’s age. This theory suggests that both recent and remote episodic memories will be impaired if the hippocampus is damaged. However, semantic memories (general facts) may become independent of the hippocampus over time, so they might follow a temporal gradient.
What Hamann and Squire Aimed to Compare:
Temporal Gradient vs. Uniform Loss: The central comparison was whether retrograde amnesia followed a temporal gradient (consistent with the standard model of consolidation) or resulted in uniform loss of autobiographical memories (as predicted by multiple trace theory).
Hippocampal Role Over Time: They aimed to determine whether the hippocampus is necessary for the retrieval of older autobiographical memories or if these memories can be fully transferred to cortical areas over time, thus becoming independent of the hippocampus.
What tests were administered to EP, other amnesic participants, and control participants? Into what two categories did these tests fall?
Autobiographical Memory Tests (Episodic Memory):
Examples:
Autobiographical Memory Interview (AMI): Recall of personal events from childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
Cued Recall: Triggering specific life events through cues.
Category: Focused on personal, time-specific experiences (episodic memory).
General Knowledge Tests (Semantic Memory):
Examples:
Famous Faces Test: Identifying well-known individuals.
Public Events Test: Recalling historical events.
Vocabulary and Fact Knowledge Tests: Assessing general world knowledge.
Category: Focused on facts and knowledge (semantic memory)
What tests were administered to EP, the other amnesic participants, and the
control participants? Into what two categories did these tests fall?
Answer:
Autobiographical Memory Tests (Episodic Memory):
Examples:
Autobiographical Memory Interview (AMI): Recall of personal events from childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
Cued Recall: Triggering specific life events through cues.
Category: Focused on personal, time-specific experiences (episodic memory).
General Knowledge Tests (Semantic Memory):
Examples:
Famous Faces Test: Identifying well-known individuals.
Public Events Test: Recalling historical events.
Vocabulary and Fact Knowledge Tests: Assessing general world knowledge.
Category: Focused on facts and knowledge (semantic memory).
Basic Pattern of Results for EP, Other Amnesic Participants, and Control Participants:
Basic Pattern of Results for EP, Other Amnesic Participants, and Control Participants:
Episodic Memory (Autobiographical Memory Tests):
EP and other amnesic participants were severely impaired in recalling personal events from their past.
They showed significant deficits in both recalling and recognizing personal life events (e.g., childhood, adolescence, adulthood).
Performance on these episodic memory tests was much worse than that of control participants, indicating a major loss of autobiographical memories.
Semantic Memory (General Knowledge Tests):
Despite severe impairments in episodic memory, EP and other amnesic participants showed preserved performance in tests of semantic memory.
They were able to recognize famous faces and recall public events and general facts at levels similar to the control participants.
Vocabulary and general world knowledge were largely intact, demonstrating that their semantic memory remained functional.
Control Participants:
Control participants performed well on both episodic and semantic memory tests.
They could recall both personal events and general world knowledge without difficulty, showing no memory impairments.
What conclusions did Hamann and Squire draw from the results?
Dissociation Between Episodic and Semantic Memory:
Hamann and Squire concluded that there is a clear dissociation between episodic memory (personal autobiographical events) and semantic memory (general world knowledge) in cases of retrograde amnesia.
While episodic memory was significantly impaired in EP and other amnesic participants, their semantic memory remained largely intact, suggesting that these two types of memory rely on different neural systems.
The Role of the Hippocampus in Episodic Memory:
The findings supported the idea that the hippocampus and related structures in the medial temporal lobe are crucial for the retrieval of episodic memories.
Damage to these areas, as seen in amnesic patients, resulted in severe deficits in recalling personal life events, indicating the hippocampus’s ongoing role in episodic memory retrieval.
Semantic Memory Relies Less on the Hippocampus:
Semantic memory, including facts and general knowledge, appears to be less reliant on the hippocampus over time.
The preservation of general knowledge in amnesic participants like EP suggests that semantic memory becomes more distributed across cortical areas and less dependent on the hippocampus for retrieval.
Support for the Standard Model of Systems Consolidation:
The results were consistent with the Standard Model of Systems Consolidation, which posits that over time, semantic memories become independent of the hippocampus and are stored in neocortical areas. This explains why semantic memory was largely intact despite the severe damage to the hippocampus in amnesic patients.
Multiple Trace Theory Less Supported:
The results provided less support for Multiple Trace Theory (MTT), which argues that the hippocampus is involved in the retrieval of episodic memories indefinitely. While the impairment in episodic memory aligns with MTT, the preservation of semantic memory supports the idea that it can become independent of the hippocampus over time, aligning more with the Standard Model.
Why do Hamann and Squire think that their study allows clearer conclusions than
previous studies on the topic
Why Hamann and Squire Believe Their Study Allows Clearer Conclusions:
Use of Well-Characterized Amnesic Patients:
Hamann and Squire studied well-characterized amnesic patients, particularly EP, who had precisely defined brain damage. This allowed for clearer connections between the observed memory impairments and the specific brain regions affected (e.g., hippocampus and medial temporal lobes).
Many earlier studies did not have such detailed information about the extent and location of brain damage, making it harder to link memory deficits to particular neural structures.
Distinction Between Episodic and Semantic Memory:
Their study provided a clear dissociation between episodic memory (personal, autobiographical events) and semantic memory (general knowledge), which allowed them to conclude more confidently that these two types of memory rely on different neural systems.
Previous studies had often focused on one type of memory or failed to clearly separate episodic from semantic memory, leading to more ambiguous results.
Comprehensive Testing Across Memory Types:
Hamann and Squire used a broad range of memory tests, including both episodic memory (e.g., recalling personal life events) and semantic memory (e.g., knowledge of famous people and facts). This allowed them to examine how different memory systems were affected by amnesia and to draw clearer conclusions about the specificity of memory loss.
Earlier studies often focused on one type of memory or did not include such comprehensive testing across different memory types, making it harder to identify clear patterns of impairment.
Focus on Both Recall and Recognition:
The study incorporated both recall and recognition tasks for both episodic and semantic memory. This comprehensive approach allowed Hamann and Squire to assess not only the ability to recall memories but also to recognize previously learned information, offering a fuller picture of memory function in amnesic patients.
Previous studies often focused on just one type of memory test, which limited the conclusions that could be drawn.
Comparison with Control Participants:
By comparing the performance of amnesic patients like EP with healthy control participants, Hamann and Squire could make stronger claims about the extent of memory impairment and how it differed from normal memory function.
Previous studies often lacked this direct comparison, making it harder to understand the full impact of amnesia on memory systems
anomia
Deficit in naming not resulting from impairment in object recognition or
peripheral speech production processes. For example, an anomic patient who is
shown a picture of an apple may know very well what it is, and may be able to
provide a lot of information about it (e.g., that it is a fruit, is used in making pies,
etc.), but may nevertheless not be able to come up with the word apple
place cells.
Neurons that respond when the individual is in a particular location within a
spatial environment. First discovered in rats but may also be present in humans
retrosplenial cortex
Cortex immediately posterior to the splenium (the most posterior
portion of the corpus callosum). The region is part of the cingulate gyrus
Theoretical Questions Investigated by Teng and Squire:
Theoretical Questions Investigated by Teng and Squire:
Can Spatial Memory Be Preserved Despite Hippocampal Damage?
Teng and Squire aimed to explore whether spatial memory, particularly long-term spatial memory, can remain intact in individuals with extensive hippocampal damage.
Specifically, they wanted to know if someone with hippocampal damage could still navigate or recall detailed spatial information about environments they learned long before the onset of their condition.
Is Spatial Memory a Form of Semantic Memory?
Another key question was whether spatial memory could be considered a type of semantic memory, which is independent of the hippocampus over time.
They sought to investigate whether spatial knowledge (such as knowing the layout of a city or familiar routes) could be preserved in the same way that factual knowledge is often preserved in people with amnesia.
Does the Hippocampus Play a Permanent Role in Spatial Memory Retrieval?
A central theoretical question was whether the hippocampus is always required for retrieving spatial memories, or if, like semantic memories, they can become independent of the hippocampus after long-term consolidation in the neocortex.
This was related to broader theories of memory consolidation, including the Standard Model of Systems Consolidation, which suggests that certain types of memory, including factual and possibly spatial memory, may become independent of the hippocampus over time.
Differences Between Episodic and Semantic Memory for Spatial Information:
Teng and Squire also sought to examine whether spatial memory could be better understood as a form of semantic memory, distinct from episodic memory (which is personal and time-specific), or if spatial memory required hippocampal involvement indefinitely, as episodic memory does.
They were investigating the extent to which detailed spatial knowledge (e.g., the layout of a familiar neighborhood) might be stored similarly to general world knowledge in the brain.
What two spatial environments did Teng and Squire ask EP about? What was the
critical difference between these environments?
Two Spatial Environments Teng and Squire Asked EP About:
The Layout of the Neighborhood Where EP Grew Up:
Teng and Squire asked EP to recall and describe the spatial layout of his childhood neighborhood in San Diego, where he had lived for many years before the onset of his amnesia.
The Layout of His Current Neighborhood:
They also asked EP to describe the layout of his current neighborhood, where he had been living for a shorter time after the onset of his amnesia.
Critical Difference Between These Environments:
Time of Learning:
The critical difference between these two environments was that EP had learned the layout of his childhood neighborhood long before he developed amnesia, while he had acquired knowledge of his current neighborhood after his brain damage occurred.
This distinction was important because it allowed Teng and Squire to test whether long-term spatial memories (from before the onset of amnesia) were preserved, while new spatial memories (acquired after hippocampal damage) were impaired.
How were EP and the control participants tested on their spatial knowledge?
Why were these particular tests chosen?
Verbal Description of Spatial Layouts:
EP and control participants were asked to verbally describe the layout of specific spatial environments, such as the neighborhood they grew up in or their current neighborhood.
This task assessed their ability to recall landmarks, street layouts, and relationships between locations, testing their mental representation of space.
Pointing to Landmarks from Memory:
Participants were asked to point to specific landmarks in the neighborhood or other familiar environments, as if they were standing at a particular spot and had to orient themselves.
This task was designed to assess their spatial orientation and ability to mentally navigate the environment without visual cues.
Drawing Maps:
EP and the control participants were asked to draw maps of their neighborhoods, showing the relative locations of landmarks and streets.
This test measured their ability to create a spatial representation of their environment from memory.
Why These Tests Were Chosen:
Assessing Long-Term Spatial Memory:
These tests were chosen because they assess different aspects of spatial memory, such as the ability to recall landmarks, navigate mentally, and create visual representations of space. This variety helped to get a full picture of EP’s spatial knowledge.
Distinguishing Between Episodic and Semantic Memory:
By using verbal descriptions, pointing tasks, and map drawing, the researchers aimed to distinguish between episodic memory (memories of specific events, like walking through a neighborhood) and semantic memory (general knowledge of the layout).
These tests were ideal for assessing spatial semantic memory, which might be preserved, even if episodic memories were impaired.
Testing for Hippocampal Independence:
The tasks allowed Teng and Squire to test whether long-term spatial knowledge (such as that learned before the onset of amnesia) could be retrieved without hippocampal involvement. If EP could recall and navigate his old neighborhood but not his current one, it would suggest that long-term spatial memories become independent of the hippocampus over time.
Major Findings from the Study by Teng and Squire:
Preserved Long-Term Spatial Memory:
EP was able to accurately describe, point to landmarks, and draw a detailed map of his childhood neighborhood, which he had learned before the onset of his amnesia.
His performance on these tasks was comparable to that of the control participants, indicating that his long-term spatial memory for the neighborhood was well-preserved, even though he had significant hippocampal damage.
Impaired Recent Spatial Memory:
In contrast, EP showed severe impairment in recalling the layout of his current neighborhood, which he had learned after the onset of amnesia.
He was unable to provide accurate descriptions, point to landmarks, or draw a coherent map of the newer environment, demonstrating that he could not form new spatial memories after the damage to his hippocampus.
Hippocampus is Essential for Forming New Spatial Memories:
The findings showed that while long-term spatial memories (like those of EP’s childhood neighborhood) could be preserved without ongoing hippocampal involvement, the hippocampus is critical for forming new spatial memories.
EP’s inability to learn and recall his current neighborhood emphasized the role of the hippocampus in encoding new spatial information.
Evidence for Systems Consolidation:
The study provided strong support for the Standard Model of Systems Consolidation, which suggests that over time, memories, including spatial memories, become independent of the hippocampus and are stored in cortical areas.
EP’s intact memory for his childhood neighborhood, despite extensive hippocampal damage, suggests that long-term memories can be retrieved without the hippocampus, while new memories still depend on it.
Conclusions Drawn by Teng and Squire:
Long-Term Spatial Memory Can Be Preserved Without the Hippocampus:
Teng and Squire concluded that long-term spatial memories, such as EP’s detailed knowledge of his childhood neighborhood, can be preserved and retrieved even in the absence of a functioning hippocampus.
This supports the idea that spatial knowledge learned long before brain damage can be stored and retrieved independently of the hippocampus, likely in the neocortex.
Hippocampus is Essential for Forming New Spatial Memories:
The authors emphasized that the hippocampus is critical for forming new spatial memories. EP’s inability to learn and remember his current neighborhood demonstrated that without a functioning hippocampus, new spatial information cannot be encoded or retained.
This finding underscores the hippocampus’s role in the initial acquisition and consolidation of spatial memories.
Support for the Standard Model of Systems Consolidation:
The results aligned with the Standard Model of Systems Consolidation, which proposes that over time, memories (including spatial memories) are transferred from the hippocampus to the neocortex for long-term storage. Once this transfer is complete, the hippocampus is no longer needed for memory retrieval.
EP’s preserved memory for his childhood neighborhood but impaired memory for his current neighborhood provided evidence for this model, showing that older memories become independent of the hippocampus over time, while new memories still rely on it.
Spatial Memory as Part of Semantic Memory:
Teng and Squire suggested that spatial memory, at least for environments learned long ago, may function similarly to semantic memory (general knowledge) in that it can be retained without the hippocampus.
The ability to recall detailed spatial layouts (like EP’s childhood neighborhood) may reflect how spatial knowledge can be considered a form of semantic memory, which becomes independent of the hippocampus over time.
Episodic vs. Semantic Memory for Spatial Information:
The findings also highlighted a distinction between episodic (event-based) and semantic (fact-based) components of memory. EP’s loss of episodic memory (his inability to form new memories) contrasted with his preserved semantic-like memory for the spatial layout of his childhood neighborhood.
This supports the idea that spatial knowledge can eventually function more like semantic memory, which is less reliant on the hippocampus
Agnosia
A deficit in which the patient is impaired in recognizing objects or other
stimuli.
aphasia
General term for a language deficit. Often used more specifically to refer to
patients who are impaired in speaking, when the impairment does not result from
a peripheral deficit such as inability to control the movements of the mouth and
tongue
diencephalic
Pertaining to the diencephalon, the brain region that lies just above the
midbrain, and includes the thalamus and hypothalamus.
Korsakoff’s syndrome
Profound anterograde and retrograde memory impairment
resulting from thiamine deficiency, most commonly seen in chronic alcoholics.
The memory deficits apparently result from damage to the dorsomedial nucleus of
the thalamus and also perhaps the mammillary bodies
modality
Particular sensory domain, such as vision or hearing. Thus, for example, a
modality-specific deficit is one that involves only 1 sensory modality, as in an
object recognition deficit that affects only visually-presented objects
neocortex
Gray matter covering the surface of the cerebral hemispheres, as opposed to
gray matter in structures within the interior of the hemispheres, such as the
hippocampus. The neocortex is the most recently-evolved gray matter, hence the
prefix neo
Anterograde Amnesia:
Anterograde Amnesia:
Definition: Anterograde amnesia is the inability to form new memories after the onset of brain damage. Individuals with anterograde amnesia struggle to remember new information or events that occur after their injury.
Affected Memory: Primarily affects episodic memory (personal experiences) and sometimes semantic memory (general knowledge). The ability to recall past events before the injury may remain intact, but learning and retaining new information is severely impaired.
Example: A person with anterograde amnesia may be able to recall details from their past but cannot remember what they had for breakfast that morning or who they met yesterday.
Cause: Typically associated with damage to the hippocampus or surrounding structures in the medial temporal lobe, which are critical for memory encoding and consolidation.
Retrograde Amnesia:
efinition: Retrograde amnesia is the loss of memories that were formed before the onset of brain damage. Individuals with retrograde amnesia may have difficulty recalling past experiences or information learned prior to their injury, while their ability to form new memories may remain unaffected.
Affected Memory: Affects episodic memory (specific personal events) and, in more severe cases, semantic memory (general knowledge). However, retrograde amnesia often follows a temporal gradient (Ribot’s Law), where older memories are more preserved than recent ones.
Example: A person with retrograde amnesia might forget details about their recent past, such as a conversation from last week, but still remember childhood events.
Cause: Often results from damage to the medial temporal lobes, including the hippocampus, and other areas such as the prefrontal cortex that are involved in memory storage and retrieval.
What specific brain structures are implicated in cases of amnesia associated with
medial temporal lobe damage? Is the hippocampus the only relevant structure?
ocampus:
The hippocampus is the most well-known structure involved in memory formation and is critical for the encoding and consolidation of episodic and semantic memory. Damage to the hippocampus often results in anterograde amnesia, where the ability to form new memories is severely impaired.
While the hippocampus is crucial for creating new memories, over time, consolidated memories can become independent of the hippocampus, though it remains involved in the retrieval of recent memories.
Entorhinal Cortex:
The entorhinal cortex serves as a gateway between the hippocampus and other cortical regions, playing a critical role in spatial memory and the transmission of information between the hippocampus and the neocortex.
Damage to the entorhinal cortex can disrupt the flow of information necessary for memory consolidation and recall, contributing to memory deficits.
Perirhinal Cortex:
The perirhinal cortex is important for object recognition memory and associative memory. It helps to link sensory input (e.g., sight, sound) with memories, allowing for recognition of familiar objects and situations.
Damage to the perirhinal cortex can impair recognition memory and result in difficulties recalling associations between different stimuli.
Parahippocampal Cortex:
The parahippocampal cortex is involved in spatial memory and scene recognition, working closely with the hippocampus to help encode memories related to the environment and navigation.
Damage to this area can cause deficits in spatial memory and the ability to recognize or recall environmental contexts.
Amygdala:
While not directly involved in declarative memory (episodic and semantic), the amygdala plays a key role in emotional memory and the emotional modulation of other types of memory.
Damage to the amygdala may affect the emotional components of memories but does not usually result in the same kind of amnesia seen with hippocampal damage.
Other Cortical Areas (e.g., Prefrontal Cortex):
The prefrontal cortex is involved in memory retrieval and working memory. Damage here may affect the ability to organize and retrieve memories, even if they are stored in intact regions of the medial temporal lobe.
The prefrontal cortex helps coordinate memory retrieval strategies, especially for complex, temporally structured memories.
What distinctions among types of memory have emerged from studies of amnesic
patients?
Episodic vs. Semantic Memory:
Episodic memory refers to the ability to recall personal experiences tied to specific times and places (e.g., remembering your 10th birthday).
Semantic memory involves general knowledge about the world, such as facts, concepts, and word meanings (e.g., knowing that Paris is the capital of France).
Distinction: Studies of amnesic patients, like HM and EP, show that while episodic memory can be severely impaired (inability to recall personal events), semantic memory may remain intact (ability to recall general facts).
Declarative vs. Non-Declarative Memory:
Declarative memory (explicit memory) includes both episodic and semantic memory and involves conscious recollection of information.
Non-declarative memory (implicit memory) includes skills, habits, and procedural memory (e.g., learning to ride a bike) and priming (subtle influences of previous experience on task performance).
Distinction: Amnesic patients often show severe impairments in declarative memory but preserved non-declarative memory. For example, they may not remember learning a new skill but can still perform it well.
Short-Term (Working) Memory vs. Long-Term Memory:
Short-term memory (or working memory) allows for the temporary holding and manipulation of information (e.g., remembering a phone number long enough to dial it).
Long-term memory involves the storage of information for extended periods, including both declarative and non-declarative memory.
Distinction: Amnesic patients often have intact short-term memory but impaired long-term memory, indicating that these are separate systems. For instance, patients like HM can hold conversations (short-term) but cannot retain the information afterward (long-term).
Anterograde vs. Retrograde Memory:
Anterograde memory refers to the ability to form and retain new memories after an injury or event.
Retrograde memory refers to the ability to recall old memories from before the onset of amnesia.
Distinction: Many amnesic patients (e.g., HM and EP) suffer from anterograde amnesia, where they cannot form new memories, but retain some retrograde memory, especially for older, well-consolidated memories.
Implicit vs. Explicit Memory:
Explicit memory requires conscious recall of facts or events (e.g., remembering what you had for dinner last night).
Implicit memory influences behavior without conscious awareness (e.g., being able to complete a task you’ve practiced even if you don’t remember practicing it).
Distinction: Amnesic patients often retain implicit memory abilities (e.g., procedural skills) despite profound deficits in explicit memory (e.g., forgetting recent conversations).
What does it mean to say that the retrograde amnesia observed in most amnesic
patients with medial temporal lobe damage is temporally graded? What are the
implications of the temporal grading? [Note: Don’t be confused by the similarity of
the word temporal in temporal lobe to the word temporally in temporally graded.
Temporally refers to time.
When retrograde amnesia is described as temporally graded, it means that the severity of memory loss varies depending on how recent or distant the memories are. Specifically, in patients with medial temporal lobe damage, more recent memories (those formed closer to the time of brain damage) tend to be more impaired, while older memories (those formed long before the damage) are better preserved.
This pattern is known as Ribot’s Law or the temporal gradient, which indicates that remote memories (from earlier in life) are often more resilient to brain injury than recent memories.
Implications of Temporal Grading:
Memory Consolidation:
The temporal gradient supports the idea of systems consolidation, which posits that memories are initially dependent on the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe for encoding and storage. Over time, these memories are gradually transferred or consolidated in the neocortex, where they become more stable and independent of the hippocampus.
Implication: Older memories are better preserved because they have undergone this consolidation process and are no longer as reliant on the medial temporal lobe, while recent memories, which are still dependent on the hippocampus, are more vulnerable to loss when the medial temporal lobe is damaged.
Hippocampus’ Role in Recent Memory:
The temporal grading of retrograde amnesia implies that the hippocampus and related medial temporal structures are crucial for recent memory retrieval, even after the memories have been stored for some time.
Implication: Damage to the hippocampus disrupts access to more recent memories, which have not yet been fully consolidated in other brain regions.
Preservation of Remote Memories:
The fact that older memories are typically spared in temporally graded retrograde amnesia suggests that over time, the neocortex assumes responsibility for storing and retrieving these memories, reducing the reliance on the hippocampus.
Implication: This explains why patients with medial temporal lobe damage can often recall childhood or early-life events, even though they may struggle to remember events from the more recent past.
Clinical Implications:
Understanding the temporally graded nature of retrograde amnesia can help clinicians assess the severity and scope of memory loss in patients with medial temporal lobe damage. It also highlights the importance of focusing on strategies that could potentially aid in preserving recent memories before they are lost due to damage.
What conclusions emerge from studies of amnesia about the roles played by medial
temporal lobe structures in memory?
Conclusions from Studies of Amnesia About the Roles of Medial Temporal Lobe Structures in Memory:
Medial Temporal Lobe (MTL) Structures Are Crucial for Forming New Memories:
The hippocampus and surrounding structures in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), such as the entorhinal, perirhinal, and parahippocampal cortices, are essential for the formation of new episodic (personal events) and semantic (general knowledge) memories.
Conclusion: Damage to the MTL, particularly the hippocampus, results in anterograde amnesia, where individuals are unable to form new memories after the onset of brain damage. This indicates that these structures are key in the encoding and early consolidation of new memories.
MTL Is Not the Final Storage Site for Long-Term Memories:
Studies of amnesic patients reveal that while the MTL is crucial for the formation of new memories, it is not where long-term memories are stored. Instead, long-term memories, especially older ones, are gradually transferred to cortical regions, such as the neocortex, where they become more stable and independent of the MTL.
Conclusion: The MTL, particularly the hippocampus, plays a temporary role in the early stages of memory consolidation, but once memories are consolidated, they no longer depend on the MTL for retrieval.
Role of the Hippocampus in Episodic Memory:
The hippocampus is specifically involved in encoding and retrieving episodic memories, which are memories of specific personal experiences. Patients with hippocampal damage, such as HM and EP, often exhibit severe deficits in recalling autobiographical events (episodic memory) while maintaining their ability to recall semantic facts.
Conclusion: The hippocampus plays a central role in encoding and retrieving episodic memories, allowing individuals to mentally “re-experience” past events.
MTL Supports the Binding of Information:
MTL structures, especially the hippocampus, are involved in binding different elements of a memory together (e.g., the who, what, where, and when of an event). This process is essential for forming coherent episodic memories.
Conclusion: The MTL, particularly the hippocampus, is essential for associative memory, allowing individuals to link various components of an experience (e.g., the sights, sounds, and emotions of an event) into a unified memory trace.
MTL Structures Are Not Required for Non-Declarative Memory:
Non-declarative (implicit) memory, which includes procedural memory (skills and habits), priming, and conditioning, remains intact in amnesic patients with MTL damage. These forms of memory rely on brain regions outside the MTL, such as the basal ganglia and cerebellum.
Conclusion: The MTL is not required for non-declarative memory, which is why amnesic patients can still learn new skills (e.g., motor tasks) even if they cannot consciously remember practicing them.
Retrograde Amnesia Is Temporally Graded:
Retrograde amnesia, often observed in patients with MTL damage, typically shows a temporal gradient, where recent memories are more affected than older memories. This pattern suggests that as memories become older, they are gradually consolidated in the neocortex and become less dependent on the MTL.
Conclusion: The MTL is involved in retrieving recent memories, but older memories that have been fully consolidated become independent of the MTL and are stored in other brain areas.
confabulation
false statements
Episodic Memory
your experience of memories
procedural memory
Memory underlying skills, such as the ability to ride a bicycle.
Procedural memory is one aspect of non-declarative memory. Note that some of
the abilities Sacks discusses under this heading (e.g., speaking, reading, writing)
would not necessarily be considered procedural memory by all theorists.
semantic memory
General knowledge, as opposed to memory for specific events one
has experienced (episodic memory)
What conclusions emerge from studies of amnesia about the roles played by medial
temporal lobe structures in memory?
Conclusions from Studies of Amnesia About the Roles of Medial Temporal Lobe Structures in Memory:
Medial Temporal Lobe (MTL) Structures Are Crucial for Forming New Memories:
The hippocampus and surrounding structures in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), such as the entorhinal, perirhinal, and parahippocampal cortices, are essential for the formation of new episodic (personal events) and semantic (general knowledge) memories.
Conclusion: Damage to the MTL, particularly the hippocampus, results in anterograde amnesia, where individuals are unable to form new memories after the onset of brain damage. This indicates that these structures are key in the encoding and early consolidation of new memories.
MTL Is Not the Final Storage Site for Long-Term Memories:
Studies of amnesic patients reveal that while the MTL is crucial for the formation of new memories, it is not where long-term memories are stored. Instead, long-term memories, especially older ones, are gradually transferred to cortical regions, such as the neocortex, where they become more stable and independent of the MTL.
Conclusion: The MTL, particularly the hippocampus, plays a temporary role in the early stages of memory consolidation, but once memories are consolidated, they no longer depend on the MTL for retrieval.
Role of the Hippocampus in Episodic Memory:
The hippocampus is specifically involved in encoding and retrieving episodic memories, which are memories of specific personal experiences. Patients with hippocampal damage, such as HM and EP, often exhibit severe deficits in recalling autobiographical events (episodic memory) while maintaining their ability to recall semantic facts.
Conclusion: The hippocampus plays a central role in encoding and retrieving episodic memories, allowing individuals to mentally “re-experience” past events.
MTL Supports the Binding of Information:
MTL structures, especially the hippocampus, are involved in binding different elements of a memory together (e.g., the who, what, where, and when of an event). This process is essential for forming coherent episodic memories.
Conclusion: The MTL, particularly the hippocampus, is essential for associative memory, allowing individuals to link various components of an experience (e.g., the sights, sounds, and emotions of an event) into a unified memory trace.
MTL Structures Are Not Required for Non-Declarative Memory:
Non-declarative (implicit) memory, which includes procedural memory (skills and habits), priming, and conditioning, remains intact in amnesic patients with MTL damage. These forms of memory rely on brain regions outside the MTL, such as the basal ganglia and cerebellum.
Conclusion: The MTL is not required for non-declarative memory, which is why amnesic patients can still learn new skills (e.g., motor tasks) even if they cannot consciously remember practicing them.
Retrograde Amnesia Is Temporally Graded:
Retrograde amnesia, often observed in patients with MTL damage, typically shows a temporal gradient, where recent memories are more affected than older memories. This pattern suggests that as memories become older, they are gradually consolidated in the neocortex and become less dependent on the MTL.
Conclusion: The MTL is involved in retrieving recent memories, but older memories that have been fully consolidated become independent of the MTL and are stored in other brain areas.
What are the similarities of LSJ,HM, and Clive Wearing.
Severe Anterograde Amnesia:
Clive Wearing, LSJ, and HM all suffer from severe anterograde amnesia, meaning they are unable to form new long-term memories after the onset of their brain damage.
All three individuals can live in the present but cannot retain new information for more than a few moments, making it difficult for them to remember recent events, names, or conversations.
Impairments in Episodic Memory:
Like Clive Wearing, both LSJ and HM have profound deficits in episodic memory, meaning they are unable to recall personal experiences or specific events from their lives after their brain injuries. This includes both the inability to form new episodic memories (anterograde amnesia) and, to some extent, the loss of past episodic memories (retrograde amnesia).
Clive Wearing cannot remember what he did a few minutes ago or what occurred in his past, which is similar to HM’s and LSJ’s inability to recall recent personal events.
Preservation of Procedural Memory:
In all three cases, procedural memory (the memory of how to perform tasks or skills) is preserved despite the severe impairment in episodic and semantic memory.
For example, Clive Wearing can still play the piano proficiently, despite not being able to recall learning the skill. Similarly, HM retained his ability to perform motor skills, like mirror drawing, and LSJ could still create new pieces of art even after the onset of amnesia.
Damage to Medial Temporal Lobes:
All three individuals have significant damage to the medial temporal lobes, particularly the hippocampus, which is critical for memory formation.
HM had parts of his medial temporal lobes surgically removed, while LSJ suffered damage from encephalitis, and Clive Wearing experienced brain damage due to a viral infection (herpes simplex encephalitis), leading to similar memory impairments.
What are some differences between LSJ,HM, and Clive wearing?
Severity of Retrograde Amnesia:
Clive Wearing suffers from extreme retrograde amnesia, losing almost all memories of his past life, including memories of his musical career and personal history.
In contrast, HM had temporally graded retrograde amnesia, meaning he could remember events from his childhood and early life fairly well, but had more difficulty recalling events closer to the time of his surgery.
LSJ, while also having retrograde amnesia, was able to recall some autobiographical details from her past, though she experienced profound deficits in general knowledge and expertise.
Preservation of Semantic Memory:
HM and Clive Wearing had relatively intact semantic memory for general facts about the world that were learned before their brain damage. HM could still understand the meaning of words and general knowledge, while Clive Wearing retained some factual information despite not remembering personal experiences.
LSJ, on the other hand, showed severe deficits in semantic memory, especially in areas of premorbid expertise (such as art and music), despite being an expert in those fields before her illness.
Emotional Experience and Awareness:
Clive Wearing’s case is unique in that he is profoundly aware of his memory deficits and expresses intense emotional distress about his inability to remember anything beyond the current moment. He frequently expresses the feeling of “waking up” and being unable to recall his previous experiences, leading to significant emotional turmoil.
HM, while aware of his memory difficulties, did not express the same level of emotional distress or awareness of his condition. He lived a more stable and content life, seemingly less troubled by his amnesia.
LSJ also lacked the same emotional disturbance experienced by Clive Wearing and did not exhibit the same level of distress regarding her memory deficits.
Functional Abilities:
Clive Wearing is far more impaired in daily life, requiring constant care due to the severity of his memory impairments. His profound amnesia leaves him with almost no capacity to function independently.
In contrast, HM was able to live a somewhat independent life in a structured environment and could engage in daily activities with help, even though he had significant memory impairments.
LSJ, though impaired, was able to engage in creative work such as art and music, showing some ability to function in specific domains despite her severe memory deficits.
What examples does Sacks give to illustrate Clive Wearing’s anterograde
amnesia?
Inability to Form New Memories:
Sacks describes how Clive Wearing lives in a state of constant confusion, feeling as though he has just “woken up” every few minutes. He repeatedly says he is “completely conscious for the first time,” unaware that this experience has happened countless times before. This demonstrates his inability to form new memories and hold onto information beyond a fleeting moment.
Repeated Diary Entries:
Wearing kept a diary in which he continuously wrote entries such as “I am awake for the first time” or “Now I am really awake,” often crossing out previous entries when he no longer believed them to be true. Each time he wrote in his diary, he believed it was the first time he had regained consciousness, illustrating his complete lack of memory for recent events and his inability to remember writing those very same words just moments earlier.
Constant Reintroduction to His Wife:
Sacks highlights how Clive Wearing’s wife, Deborah, would visit him frequently, and every time she entered the room, he would greet her as if he hadn’t seen her in years, despite the fact that she might have left only a few minutes earlier. His overwhelming joy and surprise at seeing her each time illustrates his inability to retain any memory of recent events, including interactions with the person most familiar to him.
Forgetting Conversations Immediately:
Wearing could engage in brief conversations, but within moments, he would completely forget what had been said or that the conversation had even occurred. This inability to recall conversations or events just moments after they happen is a classic symptom of his anterograde amnesia.
Moment-to-Moment Existence:
Sacks emphasizes that Wearing’s life is lived in a perpetual present, with no continuity from one moment to the next. He cannot create new memories, so he constantly experiences the world as though each moment is entirely new, with no awareness of the immediate past.
What examples does Sacks give to illustrate Clive Wearing’s retrograde amnesia?
Loss of Personal Memories:
Sacks describes how Clive Wearing has little to no memory of his personal past, including major life events such as his marriage to his wife, Deborah, or his earlier career as a renowned musician and conductor. His retrograde amnesia erased most of his personal life history, making it impossible for him to recall these important moments.
Forgetting the Details of His Musical Career:
Despite being a highly accomplished musician before his illness, Clive cannot remember specific details of his professional achievements, performances, or the orchestras he conducted. He knows in a general sense that he was a musician, but his memories of specific concerts, rehearsals, and collaborations have been largely lost, demonstrating the profound impact of his retrograde amnesia on his professional identity.
No Recollection of His Children:
Clive Wearing has no memory of his children from his first marriage. This profound loss illustrates how his retrograde amnesia extends to deeply personal aspects of his life, as he cannot recall their existence or any moments shared with them.
Fragmentary Retention of Certain Facts:
While Wearing’s retrograde amnesia is severe, Sacks notes that he retains certain fragmentary bits of information from his past, such as his general understanding that he was involved in music. However, this knowledge is disconnected from specific personal memories or events, showing that while some factual knowledge is preserved, the rich context of his personal history is lost.
Fundamentals of Cognitive Science?
Visual Perception:
Function: Visual perception is the process by which the brain interprets visual stimuli from the environment, allowing us to detect, analyze, and make sense of the objects, shapes, colors, and movements around us.
Examples: It enables us to recognize shapes, distance, depth, motion, and differences between objects. For instance, recognizing a car moving towards you or seeing a friend’s face in a crowd.
Object Recognition:
Function: Object recognition refers to the brain’s ability to identify and categorize objects based on visual input. It involves recognizing familiar objects (such as a book, cup, or tree) and associating them with previous knowledge stored in memory.
Examples: Recognizing a coffee cup by its shape and color or identifying a tree as an oak based on its leaves. Object recognition helps us interact meaningfully with our environment.
Language Comprehension/Production:
Language Comprehension:
Function: The ability to understand spoken or written language, including the meaning of words, phrases, and sentences.
Examples: Listening to someone give directions or reading a book and understanding its content.
Language Production:
Function: The ability to generate and express language through speech, writing, or other forms of communication.
Examples: Speaking fluently during a conversation or writing a letter. It involves formulating thoughts and ideas and turning them into words or sentences.
Memory:
Function: Memory involves the brain’s ability to encode, store, and retrieve information. Memory can be divided into different types, such as episodic memory (personal experiences), semantic memory (general knowledge), and procedural memory (skills and habits).
Examples: Remembering what you ate for breakfast (episodic memory), recalling the capital of a country (semantic memory), or riding a bicycle (procedural memory).
Spatial Cognition:
Function: Spatial cognition refers to the brain’s ability to understand and navigate physical space, recognize spatial relationships between objects, and mentally visualize shapes and layouts. It allows for orientation and the manipulation of objects in space.
Examples: Finding your way in a city, understanding a map, or visualizing how furniture might fit in a room.
Motor Control:
Function: Motor control is the ability to initiate, coordinate, and execute movements of the body, ranging from fine motor skills (like writing) to gross motor skills (like walking or running). It involves the brain, spinal cord, and muscles working together to produce smooth, purposeful movements.
Examples: Walking, typing, throwing a ball, or playing a musical instrument. It requires precise timing and muscle coordination to carry out complex tasks.
Neural vs. cognitive explanations
eural Explanations:
Focus on biological and physiological mechanisms in the brain.
Explain how neurons, brain regions, and neural circuits contribute to specific cognitive functions.
Example: The hippocampus is critical for memory encoding, and damage to it results in anterograde amnesia.
Cognitive Explanations:
Focus on mental processes and the flow of information in the mind.
Describe how we process, store, and retrieve information, using theoretical models.
Example: Memory can be divided into working memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory, each with different functions.
What is the abstract/summary of a scientific paper?
he abstract provides a concise overview of the entire study. It summarizes the purpose, methods, results, and conclusions in a brief format, typically 150-250 words. Readers can get a quick understanding of the study’s main findings and significance.
What does the introduction section of a scientific paper include?
introduction presents the background information and rationale for the study. It outlines the research question or hypothesis, reviews relevant literature, and explains the study’s purpose and its significance in the field.
What is included in the case history/report section?
The case history provides background information about the patient, including their medical history, symptoms, diagnosis, and any relevant personal history. It helps readers understand the patient’s condition and how it relates to the study.
What is the purpose of the methods section in a scientific paper?
The methods section details how the study was conducted, including the participants, procedures, materials, and experimental design. It ensures reproducibility by explaining the steps clearly so others can replicate the study.
What is described in the results section of a paper?
The results section presents the findings of the study, often using tables, graphs, or statistical analyses. It provides data without interpretation, summarizing what was discovered in relation to the research questions or hypotheses.
What is the function of the discussion section in a scientific paper?
the discussion interprets the results, explaining their significance and how they relate to the original research question. It also compares findings to previous research, discusses limitations, and may suggest future research directions.
What is included in the references section of a scientific paper?
The references section lists all the sources cited throughout the paper, including books, journal articles, and other academic works. It provides the full citation for each source, allowing readers to locate the original research.
Question:
What is the role of the abstract/summary in a brief repo
Answer:
The abstract/summary provides a concise overview of the entire brief report, including the purpose, methods, key results, and conclusions. It offers a quick snapshot of the study’s main points, typically in 150 words or less.
iroduction/Methods/Results/Discussion Combined
Question:
What is typically included in the combined introduction, methods, results, and discussion section of a brief report?
In a brief report, the introduction, methods, results, and discussion are often combined into one section. This section includes:
Introduction: Briefly states the research question or problem and background information.
Methods: A concise description of the study design, participants, procedures, and materials used.
Results: A summary of the key findings, often with brief statistical results or data presentation.
Discussion: An interpretation of the results, linking them to the hypothesis or research question, and briefly discussing the implications or limitations.
What were the two task groups for due?
Two task groups:
■ Orientation tasks (4 tasks)- slots
● “Post’ through slot - DF intact (action)
● Turn card to match slot - DF impaired (perception)
● Turn hand to match orientation - DF impaired (perception)
● Verbally indicate orientation of block -
DF impaired (perception
Size/shape (3 tasks) - blocks with different width:height ratios
● Say whether plaques are same or different - DF impaired (perception)
● Use thumb and index finger to indicate plaque width - DF impaired (perception)
● Reach out and pick up plaque - DF intact (action
Difference Between Vision-for-Perception and Vision-for-Action
Question:
How do the vision-for-perception and vision-for-action systems differ in how they use visual information?
Answer:
Vision-for-Perception: Uses visual information for conscious recognition and decision-making about objects.
Vision-for-Action: Uses visual information to automatically guide actions, such as reaching or grasping, without the need for conscious awareness.
What is the function of the vision-for-action (VFA) system?
The VFA system controls actions in the environment, such as reaching and pointing, and relies on visual information for immediate tasks. It is associated with short information retention periods and is used for precise control of actions in real-time.
What is the function of the vision-for-perception (VFP) system
The VFP system handles less precise location information and is used for longer information retention periods. It plays a role in tasks that require delayed responses and conscious judgments about the visual environment.
What does AT’s poor performance in the immediate pointing task indicate about her VFA system?
AT’s poor performance in the immediate task indicates an impairment in her vision-for-action (VFA) system, which is responsible for precise control of actions in real-time. The difficulty in controlling pointing in the immediate task demonstrates a clear VFA dysfunction.
Why does AT perform slightly better in the delayed pointing task, and what does this suggest about her VFP system?
In the delayed task, AT uses her vision-for-perception (VFP) system, which allows for longer information retention and conscious judgments. Although she makes fewer errors than in the immediate task, her overall performance is still poor, suggesting that her VFP system is also somewhat impaired
What does AT’s performance across both tasks indicate about her VFA and VFP systems?
T’s VFA system is clearly impaired, as demonstrated by poor performance in the immediate task. Her VFP system, though slightly more functional in the delayed task, is still partially impaired, as she continues to make significant errors.
Patient LSJ
Contracted herpes encephalitis
○ Severe bilateral medial temporal lobe damage
○ Profound retrograde and anterograde amnesia
○ Retrograde: impaired memory for information acquired before onset of disorder
■ LSJ could not remember autobiographical information or general knowledge
■ Poor performance on famous faces, famous places, famous art
○ Anterograde: impaired memory for information encountered after the onset of the disorder
■ LSJ didn’t know basic info about the present (who the current president is, what year it
is, etc.)
■ Poor performance on Warrington Recognition Memory Test (immediate recognition for
faces and words)
■ Poor performance on Rey-Osterrieth Figure (couldn’t even remember drawing it)
Selective deficits in amnesia
rain damage may impair memory while leaving other cognitive abilities intact
■ LSJ: preserved language, perception, spatial abilities, word knowledge (Peabody
Picture Vocabulary Test)
○ Conclusion: at least some of the brain areas damaged in LSJ are crucial for memory, but are
not required for other cognitive functions
● Dissociations in amnesia provide some of the strongest evidence for distinctions among
memory systems
What is working memory?
orking vs. long-term memory
■ Working memory: retain and manipulate info involved in ongoing cognitive processes
● Ex. mental arithmetic, conversation, digit span
■ Long-term memory: enormous amounts of info for period up to a lifetime
● Ex. life experiences, general knowledge
■ Medial temporal lobe damage typically leaves working intact, long-term impaired
explicit and implicit
eclarative Memory (also known as explicit memory):
Definition: Memory for facts and events that can be consciously recalled and verbally described.
Types:
Episodic Memory: Memory of specific personal experiences or events (e.g., recalling your last birthday party).
Semantic Memory: Memory of general knowledge and facts (e.g., knowing the capital of France).
Example: Remembering what you had for breakfast or the name of your first pet.
Non-declarative Memory (also known as implicit memory):
Definition: Memory that influences behavior without conscious awareness, involving learned skills, habits, and conditioned responses.
Types:
Procedural Memory: Memory for motor skills and tasks (e.g., riding a bike, typing on a keyboard).
Priming: Exposure to one stimulus influences the response to another stimulus.
Classical Conditioning: Learned associations between stimuli (e.g., Pavlov’s dogs salivating at the sound of a bell).
Example: Knowing how to ride a bicycle or tie your shoes without actively thinking about the steps involved.
What happen with HM?
○ Bilateral medial temporal lobe resection to treat epilepsy
○ Severely impaired in tests of anterograde amnesia
■ Didn’t remember visiting his mother three times in the hospital
○ Impairment selective within the memory domain
■ Dissociation between working memory (intact) and long-term memory (impaired)
■ Dissociation between declarative and non-declarative memor
What is some non-declarative memory from HM?
HM preserved some non-declarative memory
● Mirror-drawing, improved over time and retained ability for at least a year
● Perceptual learning (reading mirror-reversed words)
● Priming (word-stem completion and priming in perceptual identification)
● Results imply that processes for non-declarative learning are separate from those
for declarative
What is declarative and non-declarative?
Declarative: knowing that
■ Ex. personal experiences, general knowledge
○ Non-declarative: knowing how
■ Ex. skills, habits, priming, perceptual learning, etc.
Patient EP
No anterograde declarative memory
○ Chance performance on recognition tasks (impaired)
○ Normal on priming tasks
Conclusions of EP
Priming is independent of conscious memory, and of medial temporal lobe structures
○ EP’s chance performance on recognition argues against possibility that priming involves same
memory system as recognition, but is just a more sensitive measure
Does amnesia remove everything/
even when the ability to learn new declarative information is catastrophically impaired, at least
some non-declarative learning may be retained
○ HM: mirror drawing, perceptual learning, priming
○ EP: priming
○ LSJ: learning to play musical piece
What about declarative knowledge?
LSJ’s declarative knowledge is much less impaired on topics related to skills (flying, drawing, etc)
○ Skill related declarative knowledge may be at least partially separated from other forms of declarative
knowledge
Brain areas important for memory
Hippocampus, but what about other MTL structures? We don’t fully know the answer
conclusion
Conclusions
○ damage to hippocampus and other MTL structures leads consistently to severe anterograde amnesia
○ working memory & non-declarative memory can be preserved
○ retrograde memory tends to be reasonably intac
Teng and Squire (1999)?View of hippocampus,
ws of hippocampus
■ spatial hypothesis
● hippocampus stores spatial maps; essential for learning/remembering spatial environments
■ alternative hypothesis
● hippocampus essential for formation of long-term declarative memories (spatial
and non-spatial) but not for retrieval of remote (spatial or nonspatial) memories.
What did they found about EP?
Premorbid environment: intact
■ Post onset environment: severely impaired
■ medial temporal lobe structures necessary for acquiring new spatial information
(more generally, for all declarative information, spatial or non-spatial)
■ not necessary for retrieval of remote spatial memories (or non-spatial declarative
memories)
Gregory, McCloskey, & Landau (2014) examined LSJ’s recall and recognition of general world knowledge acquired before the onset of her amnesia. Indicate whether LSJ’s memory was either intact or impaired for the following tests.
Gregory, McCloskey, & Landau (2014) examined LSJ’s recall and recognition of general world knowledge acquired before the onset of her amnesia. Indicate whether LSJ’s memory was either intact or impaired for the following tests.
Everyday knowledge, recognition test: (intact/impaired)
Everyday knowledge, recall test: (intact/impaired)
Expert knowledge, recognition test: (intact/impaired)
Expert knowledge, recall test: (intact/impaired
Based on the results of the tests from Question 1, does the study support the idea that retrograde amnesia can involve large deficits across a range of general world knowledge domains?
Yes
Amnesia resulting from Medial Temporal Lobe damage typically leaves (working/long-term) memory intact and (working/long-term) memory impaired.
What is the answer
The ability of LSJ to perform other cognitive functions that do NOT involve memory is (intact/impaired). Her cognitive and brain mechanisms for memory are (intact/impaired). This shows a(n) (association/dissociation) between her memory and other cognitive functions.
True or false
Which of the following conclusions can be drawn given that LSJ demonstrates preserved cognitive abilities while also having anterograde and retrograde amnesia?
Cognitive and brain mechanisms for memory are at least partially separate from those for other cognitive abilities
Some of the brain areas damaged in LSJ are crucial for memory but aren’t required for other cognitive functions
Correct!
Both a & b
No conclusion can be drawn
Both A and B
Which of the following is/are true about the Herpes simplex virus?
Approximately 70% of people have been infected with the virus, but in most cases, the virus does not cause encephalitis
The virus usually sits in a nerve at the back of the nose and cannot move
The virus originates in the brain and travels around the body creating a variety of symptoms which range in severity
In the case of LSJ, the virus traveled to her brain which caused encephalitis
D only
A & B
A & C
Correct!
A & D
A and D why
Which of these examples illustrate LSJ’s retrograde amnesia? LSJ couldn’t remember…
her 10-year marriage prior to her illness
the death of her father prior to her illness
what Marie Curie was famous for, shortly after being told during testing after her illness.
A and B
Which of these examples illustrate LSJ’s anterograde amnesia? LSJ couldn’t remember…
her 10-year marriage prior to her illness
the death of her father prior to her illness
Correct!
what Marie Curie was famous for, shortly after being told during testing after her illness
none of the above
C
Why did lsJ preserved?
Preserved cognitive abilities
* language
* perception
* spatial ability
* etc.
Cognitive and brain mechanisms for memory are
separate from those for other cognitive abilitie
True
Working memory
imited amount of information
* short periods of time
* function: retain and manipulate information involved in
ongoing cognitive processes
* examples
* mental arithmetic
* conversation
* digit span
Long-term memory
enormous amount of information
* life experiences
* general knowledge
* periods up to a lifetime
HM who is he?
953: 27-year-old man
* high school graduate
* worked as motor winder
* epilepsy not controllable with medication
* seizures so frequent and severe that he could not work
* 1953: bilateral medial temporal lobe resection
* seizures less incapacitating than before, but . . .
* profound amnesia
* studied by over 100 researchers until his death in
2008
HM Amnesia
- working memory intact
- profound and pervasive anterograde amnesia
- milder retrograde amnesia
on tests of anterograde memory, severely impaired
regardless of
* test procedure: recall, recognition, learning speed
* stimulus material: words, digits, paragraphs, faces, shapes,
tones, tunes, public events, personal events
* sensory modality for presenting information: vision,
hearing, touch, smell
* anecdotal evidence
* does not know what year it is, who is President
* cannot remember his own experiences
* forgets people met after surgery as soon as they
leave room
Hm mom visits?
on tests of anterograde memory, severely impaired
regardless of
* test procedure: recall, recognition, learning speed
* stimulus material: words, digits, paragraphs, faces, shapes,
tones, tunes, public events, personal events
* sensory modality for presenting information: vision,
hearing, touch, smell
* anecdotal evidence
* does not know what year it is, who is President
* cannot remember his own experiences
* forgets people met after surgery as soon as they
leave room
What happen withHm with retrograde amnesia?
partial retrograde amnesia covering about 3 years
prior to surgery
* more remote memories appear intact
* later studies suggested that remote memories may
not be fully norma
Hm impairment?
HM
* impairment selective to memory
* normal performance on tests of language, intelligence,
perception, abstract thinking & reasoning
* impairment selective within the memory domain
* dissociation between working memory (intact) and long-
term memory (impaired)
* dissociation between declarative and non-declarative
memory
Declarative vs. Non-Declarative Memory
- declarative memory: knowing that
- knowledge we can reflect upon and talk about
- personal experiences
- general knowledge
- non-declarative memory: knowing how
- skills, habits, priming, perceptual learning, etc.
- effects of experience that may not be accessible to
awareness - typically expressed through performance of some sort
- probably not a single type of memory
- despite profound anterograde amnesia in declarative
memory, HM shows some non-declarative learning
ability
Was HM priming normal
yes(HM and other patients with profound anterograde
amnesia for declarative information show
preserved non-declarative memory
* seems to imply that processes for non-declarative
learning are separate from those for declarative
learning
What is priming according do EP
priming is independent of conscious memory, and of
medial temporal lobe structures
* EP’s chance performance on recognition argues
against possibility that priming involves same memory
system as recognition, but is just a more sensitive
measure
perirhinal cortex
* entorhinal cortex
* parahippocampal cortex
* do these areas play any role in
memory?
Yes, draw it
Do we know what all the parts of the memory is?
No, hippocampus and other MTL brain areas are not
required for
* working memory
* non-declarative memory
* retrieval of declarative long-term memories
* principal role of the structures is in formation of
new long-term declarative memories
* basis for conclusions
* damage to hippocampus and other MTL structures leads
consistently to severe anterograde amnesia
* working memory & non-declarative memory can be
preserved
* retrograde memory tends to be reasonably intact
* although some patients have significant retrograde amnesia
(especially LSJ)
Teng & square
eng & Squire (1999)
* Views of hippocampus
* spatial hypothesis
* hippocampus stores spatial maps and so is essential for
learning and remembering spatial environments, including
those learned long ago
* alternative hypothesis
* hippocampus essential for formation of long-term declarative
memories (spatial and non-spatial) but not for retrieval of
remote (spatial or non-spatial) memori
Test of tens squire
asks
* Familiar Navigation
* describe how to get from home to familiar location
* Can you tell me how to get from your house to the Bret Harte
School?
* Novel Navigation
* from one familiar location to another
* Can you tell me how to get from the Union High School to the
Hayward Theatre?
* Alternative Routes
* same as novel, but assuming a main road on the route is
blocked
* Point to Landmarks
* imagine self at familiar location facing a particular direction
* point in direction of another specified familiar locatio
colclusion of Test ten squire
medial temporal lobe structures necessary for acquiring
new spatial information (more generally, for all declarative
information, spatial or non-spatial)
* not necessary for retrieval of remote spatial memories (or
non-spatial declarative memories)
Neocortex?
eocortex—gray matter covering surface of cerebral
hemispheres—widely assumed to be important for
storage and retrieval of declarative long-term memories
Check the answer
is able to hold a conversation but is unable to remember having had that conversation a few minutes later. This observation, taken together with other findings, indicates that HM’s working memory is (intact/impaired) and his long-term memory is (intact/impaired). HM provides evidence for a(n) (association/dissociation) between working and long-term memory.
Question
After HM’s surgery, he was able to remember the President of the United States during WWII (which ended 8 years before the surgery). He was unable to remember the current President of the United States when tested. HM had a problem in (encoding/retrieving) memories after his surgery
What it is non-declarative and declarative?
Recognition tasks probe (declarative/non-declarative) memory and priming tasks probe (declarative/non-declarative) memory.
Questions
SJ was given three musical compositions to play on her viola. She first played all three compositions and then was allowed to practice only compositions A and B. An hour later, LSJ was then asked to perform all three compositions again. Compared to composition C, LSJ showed a(n) (improved/worsened/unchanged) ability to play compositions A and B. Learning how to play a new piece on the viola is an example of (declarative/non-declarative) memory. When asked about the compositions, LSJ (was/was not) able to recall playing the pieces, which is evidence of an impairment in (declarative/non-declarative) memory
Answer 1:
Correct! improved
Answer 2:
Correct! non-declarative
Correct Answer
non
Correct Answer
nondeclarative
Answer 3:
Correct! was not
Correct Answer
not
Correct Answer
wasnot
Answer 4:
Correct! declarative
The spatial hypothesis discussed by Teng & Squire (1999) states that the hippocampus stores spatial maps and is essential for learning spatial environments and remembering the environments thereafter. Did the results of Teng & Squire support or fail to support this hypothesis? _____________ (support/fail to support).
fail
Patients that have difficulty recalling events that occurred in the few years immediately prior to an injury but not those that took place decades before the injury were described by Squire & Wixted (2011) to have ______________ amnesia.
Temporally graded retrograde
Teng & Squire (1999) conclude that the hippocampus and related medial temporal lobe structures are necessary for which of the following?
Acquiring new spatial memories
Acquiring new declarative information
Retrieval of remote spatial memories
Retrieval of non-spatial declarative memories
Teng & Squire (1999) conclude that the hippocampus and related medial temporal lobe structures are necessary for which of the following?
Acquiring new spatial memories
Acquiring new declarative information
gray matter
* white matter
* nucleus/nuclei
* medulla
* cortex
* ventricle
Gray Matter:
The regions of the brain and spinal cord that contain neuron cell bodies, dendrites, and unmyelinated axons. It is involved in processing and regulating information in the central nervous system.
White Matter:
Composed of myelinated axons, white matter facilitates communication between different areas of gray matter within the central nervous system by transmitting signals over longer distances.
Nucleus/Nuclei:
In the context of the brain, a nucleus (plural: nuclei) refers to a cluster of neuron cell bodies within the central nervous system that have a specific function, often involved in processing certain types of sensory or motor information.
Medulla:
Part of the brainstem, the medulla oblongata controls vital autonomic functions like breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure. It is located just above the spinal cord.
Cortex:
The outer layer of the brain, known as the cerebral cortex, is responsible for higher-level brain functions such as thought, perception, and decision-making. It is composed of gray matter and has a highly folded surface.
Ventricle:
These are fluid-filled cavities in the brain. The ventricles contain cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which cushions the brain, removes waste, and provides nutrients to the brain’s tissues.
What is the synapse?
t the end of the axon is an axon
terminal.
● Synapse = gap between neurons
between pre- and post-synaptic
membrane.
○ Electrochemical reaction
○ Signal sent from pre-synaptic neuron ->
release of neurotransmitters into the
synaptic cleft, binds to receptors on
post-synaptic membrane
What is the nervous system?
ignals enter and leave NS through spinal cord
what are the general bundle of cords?
General path of signals from spinal cord to brain:
- Nerves (bundles of axons) enter spinal cord -> cell bodies
in brain (nuclei) -> cerebral corte
eneral path of signals from brain -> rest of the body?
Motor areas (in cortex) -> travel along axons to spinal
cord -> motor neurons -> send signals along those axons
-> muscle fiber
Spinal cord
- Motor
- Cranial nerves:
Spinal cord
- Sensory signals come in through dorsal side of spinal
cord
- Motor signals sent out through ventral side of spinal cord
- Cranial nerves: optic, auditory, olfactory
What is the brain anatomy?
Brain Anatomy
- Locations/Directions:
- Dorsal/Ventral: top of brain
(superior)/bottom of brain
(inferior)
- Rostral/Caudal: front
(anterior)/back (posterior)
- Lateral (side), medial
(toward middle of brain)
- Planes of section
- Horizontal, coronal, sagitta
4 lobes:
- Primary cortices:
- More convolutions (folding)
- Ridges:
- Precentral gyrus, postcentral gyrus, superior temporal gyrus
- Valleys:
- Central/Rolandic sulcus:
- Lateral/Sylvian fissure:
- Longitudinal/interhemispheric fissure
4 lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital
- Primary cortices: primary motor, primary visual, primary
auditory, primary somatosensory cortex
- More convolutions (folding) - more surface of cortex for
mental processing
- Ridges: gyrus/gyri
- Precentral gyrus, postcentral gyrus, superior temporal gyrus
- Valleys: sulcus/sulci
- Central/Rolandic sulcus: separates frontal/parietal lobes
- Lateral/Sylvian fissure: separates temporal lobe from frontal and
parietal
- Longitudinal/interhemispheric fissure
Brodmann maps:
- White matter vs gray matter:
-
- Gray:
- Ventricles:
Brodmann maps: divided based on microscopic
appearance of tissue
- White matter vs gray matter:
- White: made of axons, not on surface
- Corpus callosum
- Gray: surface of cortex, made of neuron cell bodies
- Ventricles: filled with CSF, cavities in brain
Other major structures to
know:
- Medulla: where fibers cross over
- Pons: connects cerebellum to
rest of brain, some autonomic
functions
- Midbrain
- Thalamus, hypothalamus
- Basal ganglia
- Superior/inferior colliculi
- Limbic syste
Other major structures to
know:
- Medulla: where fibers cross over
- Pons: connects cerebellum to
rest of brain, some autonomic
functions
- Midbrain
- Thalamus, hypothalamus
- Basal ganglia
- Superior/inferior colliculi
- Limbic syste
Limbic system: memory, emotions Basal Ganglia
Limbic system: memory, emotions Basal Ganglia
Brain blood supply
arotid circulation:
- Blood comes into brain through 2 carotid arteries (1
on each side)
- Understand which arteries supply blood to what
areas of brain
- Common carotid arteries - 1 on each side of
neck
- Internal carotid arteries - carries blood up into
brain
- ^ gives rise to major cerebral arteries on both
sides of brain
- 2 Anterior cerebral arteries - supplies
most medial surface of frontal and
parietal lobes, some lateral surface
- 2 middle cerebral arteries (largest
arteries) - supplied largest part of
brain - medial surface, some ventral
surface of frontal lobe
- 2 posterior cerebral arteries
(everything else) - occipital, some
parietal, ventral surface of temporal
lobe, arise from vertebral arteries.
Brain blood supply 2
ertebral arteries - set of arteries that run of side of spinal column
through holes in vertebrae
- After entering skull, 2 vertebral arteries mervΩge (unlike carotid
arteries)
- 2 vertebral arteries -> Basilar artery (merged) -> splits into left
and right posterior cerebral arteries
- L and R blood supply ALMOST entirely separate (basilar artery)
- Carotid and vertebral circulation are also separate except…
- Circle of willis:
- Made up of basilar artery, beginnings of posterior cerebral artery,
ends of carotids, beginnings of anterior cerebral arteries
How blood gets out in the brain
Venous drainage (how blood gets out of brain) conducted by
- Veins
- Internal jugular veins
- Sinuses
ypes of brain damage: stroke, tumors, infections
Stroke (Cerebrovascular accident/Brain attack)
a. Symptoms: numbness, weakness, dizziness, confusion, disruption of speech/comprehension
b. Caused by disruption of brain’s blood supply
c. 2 types
i. Ischemic - obstruction of blood vessel (produces ischemia) -> cerebral infarct (if severe/prolonged)
ii. hemorrhagic - hemorrhage from ruptured blood vessel
d. Transient ischemic attack (TIA) - resolves on its own, less severe, reduced blood
Ischemic stroke
Causes of obstruction leading to ISCHEMIC stroke:
1. Thrombosis - forming at site of obstruction
2. Embolism - traveling from elsewhere (blood clot forming elsewhere)
3. Dissection - tear in inner wall of artery
What are the leading hemorrhagic stroke?
auses leading to HEMORRHAGIC stroke:
1. Arteriovenous malformation (AVM) - arterial elements directly connected to venous elements -> buildup of pressure -> risk of
hemorrhage
2. Aneurysms - caused by weakness in blood vessel walls, wall blooms out, likely to rupture
a. Can be stopped by aneurysm clip
- Head Injury
pen vs closed head injuries
- Closed:
- Coup - damage at site of blow
- Contrecoup - damage not directly from blow site (opposite side of head)
- Contusion - bruising
- Concussion - loss of consciousness w/o evidence of bleeding
- Hematoma - pool of blood caused by ruptured blood vessel, presses on brain tissue, need to
be drained
. Tumor:
Encapsulated vs infiltrating tumors
- Benign vs malignant tumors
- Mass effect - tumor taking up space has effects on rest of brain.
- Types: meningioma, glioblastoma (from glial cells), astrocytoma…
Neurodegenerative diseases
Neurodegenerative diseases - gradual death of neurons -> general decline in cognitive function
(dementia
Alzheimer’s disease - less neural tissue
- Pick’s disease
- Cortical atrophy - wasting away of brain
. Infection
Meningitis
- Herpes encephalitis
Epilepsy
Epilepsy (symptoms arising from abnormal area of brain, doesn’t damage brain)
- Seizures: when more neurons fire togeth
