16- Amnesia Flashcards
What is intact with amnesia
- Intelligence is intact
- Attentional span is intact
- Personality is unaffected
What is affected with amnesia
Ability to take in new information is severely and usually permanently affected
Case study of amnesia
HM (1957)
What is amnesia usually caused by
Damage to the medial temporal lobe or anatomically connected regions from
- head injuries,
- Alzheimer’s disease,
- epilepsy,
- stroke
Anterograde
Means after brain surgery
Which memory systems are not affected
- Procedural memory
- Verbal and visual short-term memory
- Amnesics can learn new skills
- Priming still affective
What is Declarative Memory Theory
Declarative (conscious) memory includes episodic and semantic facts, affected by amnesia
Implicit (unconscious) memory includes priming effects and procedural memory, unaffected
Tulving (1972)
Proposed that episodic and semantic memory is different
What is semantic memory
Conceptual knowledge about the world
What does Semantic dementia include
- Difficulty in remembering the meaning of words or concepts
- Difficulty naming due to semantic errors (horse and zebra confusion)
- Semantic deficits are not confined to a single modality (can include sounds)
Where is Semantic knowledge associated with
Lateral temporal cortex (on the left side of the brain)
Bayley et al., (2008)
- Tested new vocabulary in 2 adult amnesics
- Each test item contained one target word and eight foil words
Vargha-Khadem et al., (19970
Beth, Jon and Kate
- sustained damage to the hippocampus just after birth
- Have grossly impaired episodic memory
- They completed normal schooling, have good vocabularies and knowledge about the world
Retrograde
Means before brain injury
Multiple trace theory
Every time a memory is retrieved, it is re-encoded and a new set of connections between the hippocampus and the cortex is made
