2. Memory

Question 1

What are the two key tools for understanding human memory?

Answer 1

Neuropsychology (Causal) & Neuroimaging (Correlational)

Question 2

Neuropsychology, Single dissociation:

Answer 2

• Patients with brain damage can show SELECTIVE deficits (impaired in ONE task but not another)

Question 3

Neuropsychology, Double dissociation:

Answer 3

Two patients can show DOUBLE dissociation

• Patient A: impaired on task A (not B)
• Patient B: impaired on task B (not A)

Question 4

Neuroimaging & memory: two tasks show different regions active.

This supports the idea that…

Answer 4

given tasks measure distinct forms of memory

Neuroimaging is correlational!

Question 5

What is conscious memory?

Answer 5

• Available to conscious retrieval
• Can be declared (I remember this…)

e. g.:
- What phone number did I just give you (STM)

• What’s the capital of France (semantic)
• What did I eat for breakfast? (episodic)

Question 6

What is non-conscious memory?

Answer 6

• Change in behaviour
  following experience
• Cannot be declared

e. g.:
- How to drive a car (procedural learning)
- Phobias (conditioning)
- Subliminal advertising (priming)

Question 7

Episodic memory test: Free recall

Answer 7

Encoding:
Cat, Train

Retrieval:
? (Recall anything you can)

Question 8

Episodic memory test: Cued recall

Answer 8

Encoding:
Cat, Train

Retrieval:
Ca.., Tr.. (part of the memoranda is cued)

Question 9

Episodic memory test: Paired associate

Answer 9

Encoding:
Cat-Train

Retrieval:
Cat-… (completing the pair)

Question 10

Episodic memory test: Recognition

Answer 10

Encoding:
Cat, Train

Retrieval:
Cat (old), Dog (new) (deciding whether the memorandum appeared at encoding)

Question 11

Episodic memory test: Source memory

Answer 11

Encoding:
Cat (written in bold), Train (written in italics)

Retrieval:
Cat (bold), Train (italics) (deciding in what form the memorandum appeared at encoding)

Question 12

Amnesia

Answer 12

Deficit in memory

Question 13

Retrograde amnesia

Answer 13

Inability to retrieve information BEFORE trauma

Question 14

Anterograde amnesia

Answer 14

Inability to encode NEW information

Question 15

Scoville & Milner (1957):

HM case

Answer 15

Surgery to alleviate epileptic seizures:

• Removed medial temporal lobes bilaterally
• Severe retro/anterograde amnesia

BUT…

STM intact

Question 16

What part of the brain did a virus damage in Clive Wearing

Answer 16

Wearing developed a profound case of total amnesia as a result of his illness. Because of damage to the hippocampus, an area required to transfer memories from short-term to long-term memory, he is completely unable to form lasting new memories – his memory only lasts between 7 and 30 seconds

Question 17

Vargha-Khadem et al (1997):
Developmental Amnesia

• describe it

Answer 17

• Selective bilateral hippocampal damage early in life
• Anterograde amnesia
• Still bale to learn semantic info as hippocampi are selectively involved in episodic memory

Question 18

What lobes show activity during encoding/retrieval memory tasks?

Answer 18

Neuropsychology (HM, Clive, Developmental amnesia) points to hippocampi as the key structure but these regions are also involved:

• Frontal
• Parietal
• Medial Temporal

Question 19

What is familiarity?

Answer 19

Recognition in the absence of recalling source information

Question 20

What is recollection?

Answer 20

Recognition combined with retrieval of source information

Question 21

Davachi et al (2003):

Recollection vs Familiarity (fMRI)

Answer 21

Placed people in a scanner, and shown them words at encoding. (Scanning during learning)

• There were 2 encoding tasks:
  1. Imagine a scene which could be described by that word (place encoding task)

2. ## Try to imagine the word being said backwards in your head (read encoding task)At test:
   - Recollection task (have you seen the word or not? - old/new)

• Do you remember the source? (Using which task was the word encoded?)

Looking at activity in Perirhinal Cortex vs Hippocampus…

• Perirhinal is more active if the given word is recognised (compared to if the word was forgotten)
• For the recognised words, the hippocampus is more active when participants recall the source of the item (the way in which it was encoded)

!- Hippocampus = source/context

!- Perirhinal = Recognition as Old/New

This evidence is in the favour of dual source accounts (recollection & familiarity is processed separately)

Question 22

Horner et al (2012):

Neuropsychology of Recollection vs familiarity

Answer 22

Patients with selective damage to hippocampus vs healthy participants:

• Both equally good at the Old/new recognition task (familiarity)
• Patients significantly worse (performing at chance level) at associative memory task (remembering what scene was associated with recognised words - source; Recollection)

Question 23

What is the problem with dual-process accounts of episodic memory?

Answer 23

They largely ignore the idea of representations

Question 24

What are the place cells? (O’Keefe & Dostrovsky, 1971)

Answer 24

Fire in specific location (‘place field’ - where neuron fires on a heat map) in an environment

(hippocampus cares about space)

Question 25

What are the grid cells? (Hafting et al., 2005)

Answer 25

Fire in multiple locations, in a regular hexagonal pattern

hippocampus cares about space

Question 26

What are the concept cells? (Quian Quiroga et al., 2005)

Answer 26

Fire when presented with a famous person regardless of modality (Face, name, etc.) or perspective

Question 27

Doeller et al (2010):

Grid cells in humans (fMRI)

Answer 27

Greater fMRI response in Grid cells when moving on axis (across more grid points) compared to off axis (where you cross grid points less frequently)

• First evidence humans might have grid cells as found in rodents

(hippocampus cares about space)

Question 28

Horner et al (2016):

Space and imagery (in fMRI)

Answer 28

• Grid cells are as active when imagining navigating in a virtual environment as when actually navigating through it

(Hippocampus might be involved in planning navigation)

Question 29

Bird et al (2010):
Space and imagery

• 5 ‘lego’ blocks
• some columns
• some barriers (horizontal)

Answer 29

Greater fMRI response as the number of imagined boundaries increases in the hippocampus

Question 30

Hartley et al (2007):
Space perception/memory

• Target picture (scene) of four digital mountains shown
• Then 3 pictures of similar scene and 1 of the same scene appear with a view from a different perspective

Answer 30

The participant has to select which of the subsequent four mountain scenes is the same as the target one

The task is testing the ability to know where mountains are in relation to each other

Patients with selective hippocampal damage could not do this task

(Hippocampus might be critical in tasks that are not episodic in nature… critical for spatial tasks involving STM and landscape perception)

Question 31

Horner et al (2015):
Episodic memory & events (fMRI study)

Hippocampus might be critical to binding features of a particular event together to form a coherent representation which you might retrieve later

Answer 31

At encoding, participants had to try and vividly imagine a combination of:

• object (e.g. hammer)
• location (e.g. kitchen)
• person (e.g Obama)

At encoding, there was activity specific in areas specific to these 3 components outside of the hippocampus

• medial areas (people)
• parahippocampal gyrus (place area - cares about scenes)
• ## Lateral occipital (objects)!!!!!These elements seem to be bound in the anterior hippocampus

!!!!At retrieval the hippocampus is also active (leading to outflow of information to the areas which were active for the constituent elements)

Question 32

To provide evidence for a double dissociation in neuropsychology, you would require:

Answer 32

Two patients, each with lesions to different brain regions

Question 33

A common measure of episodic memory is:

Answer 33

A source memory task

Question 34

The ‘butcher on the bus’ phenomenon refers to the feeling of:

Answer 34

Seeing your local butcher on the bus, feeling you’ve met him before but not recalling where
you’ve met him (this is FAMILIARITY)

Question 35

The distinction between familiarity and recollection originates from

Answer 35

A dual-process account of recognition memory

Question 36

A computational account of episodic memory proposes that recollection results from

Answer 36

The retrieval of a complete event engram in the hippocampus, followed by reinstatement of
all event elements in the neocortex