13.1.2 Learning, Memory, Amnesia, And Brain Functioning 3

Question 1

As with other examples of implicit memory, you might not be able to ____ a motor skill or habit in words, and you might not even recognise it as a memory.

Answer 1

describe

Question 2

Although patients with hippocampal damage acquire new skills, they have enormous trouble learning new facts. Larry Squire (1992) proposed that the hippocampus is critical for ____ ____, especially episodic memory.

Answer 2

declarative memory

Question 3

In the _____ ____ ____, an animal sees an object (the sample) and then, after a delay, gets a choice between two objects, from which it must choose the one that matches the sample.

Answer 3

delayed matching-to-sample task

Question 4

In the ____ ____ ____, the procedure is the same except that the animal must choose the object that is different from the sample.

Answer 4

delayed nonmatching-to-sample task

Question 5

When people perform ____ ____, such as imagining the best route between one house and another, fMRI results showed enhanced activity in the hippocampus.

Answer 5

spatial tasks

Question 6

These results suggest a major role for the hippocampus in ____ ____.

Answer 6

spatial memory

Question 7

Results of studies suggest actual growth of the adult human hippocampus in response to ____ ____ experiences.

Answer 7

spatial learning

Question 8

A ____ ____ has several arms – typically eight – some or all of which have a bit of food at the end. It is used to test memory in lab animals.

Answer 8

radial maze

Question 9

With people, psychological researchers use a virtual radial maze that the person can navigate on a computer screen. On this task, people with damage to the ____ are slow to learn which arms are never correct, and they frequently visit one arm several times before trying all the others.

Answer 9

hippocampus

Question 10

Another test of spatial memory is the ____ ____ ____, in which a rat swims through murky water to find a rest platform that is just under the surface.

Answer 10

Morris water maze

Question 11

If a rat already learned to find the platform before damage to the hippocampus, the damage leaves the rat exploring the water ____, like a rat that had never been in the water maze before. It ignores landmarks, including a beacon of light pointing to the platform. Researchers observed that the rat acts as if it not only forgot where the platform was but also forgot that there even was a platform.

Answer 11

haphazardly

Question 12

Hippocampus and ____ ____. The campus is important for remembering details and context. A recent memory, which generally depends on the hippocampus, includes much detail. As time passes, memory becomes less detailed, less dependent on the hippocampus, and more dependent on the cerebral cortex.

Answer 12

contextual memory

Question 13

In humans, recalling a ____ ____ (which usually includes details and context) activates the hippocampus. Recalling an old factual memory may or may not activate the hippocampus, but episodic memories, because they necessarily include some context details, do activate the hippocampus.

Answer 13

recent memory

Question 14

After damage to the hippocampus, learning still occurs, but it occurs gradually over ____ ____, and it is often the kind of memory is hard to put into words.

Answer 14

repeated experiences

Question 15

Gradual learning like it depends on the basal ganglia. We could call it ____ learning or ____ learning.

Answer 15

implicit learning or habit learning

Question 16

When normal people try to learn a complex task under conditions of extreme distraction, they too learn slowly, like people with damage to the hippocampus. Their gradual learning under these conditions depends on the ____ ____.

Answer 16

basal ganglia

Question 17

Together, these results do suggest that the hippocampus is more important for declarative memory and the basal ganglia is more important for ____ ____.

Answer 17

procedural memory

Question 18

____ ____, aka Wernike-Korsakoff syndrome, is brain damage caused by prolonged thiamine deficiency.

Answer 18

Korsakoff syndrome

Question 19

Severe ____ ____ occurs mostly in chronic alcoholics who go for weeks at a time on a diet of nothing but alcoholic beverages, lacking in vitamins.

Answer 19

thiamine deficiency

Question 20

The brain needs thiamine (______) to metabolise glucose, its primary fuel.

Answer 20

vitamin B1

Question 21

Prolonged thiamine deficiency leads to a loss or shrinkage of neurons throughout the brain. One of the areas most affected is the ____ ____, the main source of input to the prefrontal cortex.

Answer 21

dorsomedial thalamus

Question 22

The symptoms of Korsakoff’s syndrome are similar to those of people with damage to the prefrontal cortex, including ____, ____, and ____ ____.

Answer 22

apathy, confusion, and memory loss

Question 23

The symptoms of Korsakoff syndrome also overlap those of hippocampal damage, with major impairment of ____ ____ and sparing of implicit memory.

Answer 23

episodic memory

Question 24

A distinctive symptom of Korsakoff syndrome is ____, in which patients fill in memory gaps with guesses.

Answer 24

confabulation

Question 25

Most of the confabulation answers are more pleasant than the currently ____ answers.

Answer 25

true