10 Memory

Question 1

What is memory?

Answer 1

the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information

Question 2

What is amnesia?

Answer 2

a defect in one or more of the three processes of memory

Question 3

The conscious retrieval of information is known as…?

Answer 3

explicit or declarative memory

Question 4

What are the two types of explicit memory?

Answer 4

episodic and semantic

Question 5

What is the recollection of past events with a sense of personal familiarity?

Answer 5

episodic memory

Question 6

What is semantic memory?

Answer 6

Memory for general declarative information such as vocabulary or arithmetic facts

Question 7

What is the definition of short term memory?

Answer 7

memories held more or less continuously in consciousness, and for a very brief interval thereafter (about 40 sec)

Question 8

What is the definition of long term memory?

Answer 8

memory retrieved after delays longer than a minute and/or after the material has departed from consciousness

Question 9

Long term and short term memory are types of…?

Answer 9

episodic memory

Question 10

What type of amnesia involves the loss of explicit memory for events occurring subsequent to a neurologic event?

Answer 10

anterograde amnesia

Question 11

What type of amnesia involves the loss of explicit memory for events which occurred prior to a neurologic event?

Answer 11

retrograde amnesia

Question 12

What type of memory refers to the facilitation of current behavior by past experience, even when there is no conscious recall of that experience?

Answer 12

implicit memory

Question 13

What are the two major forms of implicit memory?

Answer 13

procedural memory and priming

Question 14

What is procedural memory?

Answer 14

the phenomenon whereby repeated performance of a motor act enhances and automates future skill for the same act

Question 15

What is perceptual priming?

Answer 15

a short-lived enhancement of perceptually-based performance after recent exposure to visually similar material

Question 16

What is defined as the orientation to and action upon selected sensory percepts and cognitive operations?

Answer 16

attention

Question 17

What two processes do learning and memory involve at the neuronal level?

Answer 17

a) alterations in synaptic firing patterns

b) alterations in cellular morphology

Question 18

What is impaired in medial temporal lobe amnesia?

Answer 18

long-term episodic memory across sensory modalities, anterograde completely impaired, graded retrograde impairment

Question 19

What is intact in medial temporal lobe amnesia?

Answer 19

sensory and motor functions, perception, attention, language, intellect, short term memory, implicit memory

Question 20

Which circuit is involved in Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome?

Answer 20

the Papez circuit

Question 21

What are the components of the Papez circuit?

Answer 21

hippocampus, fornix, mamillary bodies, medial dorsal thalamic nucleus

Question 22

What type of memory involves temporary alteration in synaptic activity for storing and manipulating information?

Answer 22

working memory

Question 23

T/F: Implicit memory depends on specialized systems of neurons whose only function is to store rather than process information

Answer 23

F; implicit memory results from changes in neurons that are themselves components of the perceptual or behavioral pathway.

Question 24

What are the three dimensions that can be used to classify memory impairments?

Answer 24

Cognitive context, content or domain, and onset and course

Question 25

In which type of amnesia is memory capacity retained, but memory systems poorly utilized (i.e. the patient “forgets to remember”)?

Answer 25

frontal dysexecutive amnesia

Question 26

What is transient global amnesia?

Answer 26

sudden onset of anterograde and retrograde amnesia, with duration <24 hours