Amnesia

Question 1

describe the case of clive wearing

Answer 1

‘7sec memory’
viral brian infection - severe retrograde and anterograde amnesia
everyday is first day
concert pianist - can play but doesnt know about it

Question 2

describe the case of patient HM

Answer 2

surgery to prevent epilepsy - remove bilateral hippocampus in temp lobes
severe anterograde amnesia and some retrograde
short term and intelligence unimpaired
cant recognise familiar faces, read same mag over and over, perform old skills
earliest memory at 11yrs
but - some memories survive w/o hippocampus - consolidation

Question 3

define retrograde amnesia

Answer 3

unable to recall events that occurred before the development of the amnesia, even though they may be able to encode and memorize new things that occur after the onset.

Question 4

define anterograde amnesia

Answer 4

loss of the ability to create new memories after the event that caused the amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact.

Question 5

describe karsakoff syndrome

Answer 5

alcoholism - thiamine deficiency and brain damage
abnormalities in diencephalon - incorporates hypothallamus
- antero/retrograde amnesia
cause confabulation due to frontal lobe damage

Question 6

define confabulation

Answer 6

incorporation of false memory into own memory

Question 7

describe Huppert and Piercy (1978)

Answer 7

amnesic subjects with karsakoff consistently reported to forget at a normal rate whereas patients with medial temporal lobe damage reported to forget pathologically fast.
got karsakoff at same baseline recog level as control
%correct in line with control - amnesia not due to forgetting very fast
must be due to how memory is stored

Question 8

describe cowan, beschin, and dellasalla (2004) retroactive

Answer 8

ask controls and amnesia to recall story immediately or after delay
delay - interference or no interference
interference reduce in both amnesia and control BUT amnesia sig more
little memory of recall
interference impairs memory

Question 9

what abilities can amnesiacs maintain

Answer 9

7+/- 2 STM
most anterograde norm performance on digit span 
recency effect preserved 
BUTsig poorer primacy 
can still be conditioned ie eye blink
prev skills ie clive piano

Question 10

describe claparede (1911) conditioning amnesiacs

Answer 10

drawing pin prick and shaking amnesiac hand

secon meeting - not remember doctor but dont know why doesnt want to shake hand

Question 11

carmack and o’connor (1888) prev skills

Answer 11

c&oc - laser spcialist - amnesia but still do job well

Question 12

describe squire et al (1993)

Answer 12

expose to priming word “alligator”

sig faster at completing puzzle word “c_o_o_i_e” (crocodile)

Question 13

describe glisky schacter and tulving (1986)

Answer 13

method of vanishing cues
systematic reduction of letter fragments of to-be-learned words across trials
able to produce the target words in the absence of fragment cues
retained the vocabulary over a 6-week interval

Question 14

how can amnesia inform us on how memory works

Answer 14

support and cast doubt on memory models
double disossiations - can have intact LTM and impaired STM and vise versa
evidence for the division between the two (support at and shriff)

Question 15

describe atkinson and shriffin

Answer 15

STM &LTM -
episodic vs semantic
declarative vs procedural
implicit vs explicit

LTM - declarative/explicit - epsodic or semantic
-non declar/implicit - procedural, priming or conditioning

Question 16

define episodic

Answer 16

autobio, time based

Question 17

define semantic

Answer 17

ideas, concepts, common knowledge

Question 18

define procedural

Answer 18

subset of implicit memory
what can do - sensorimotor tasks
memory of skills/how to do things

Question 19

define declarative

Answer 19

subset of explicit memory
what can say
facts etc
split into episodic and semantic

Question 20

define implicit

Answer 20

unconscious

Question 21

define explicit

Answer 21

conscious

Question 22

describe Tulving (1989)

Answer 22

episodic vs semantic memory
amnesia studies better memory for facts than episodes
facts likely to be learnt before amnesia

Question 23

what does research suggest about episodic and semantic memory

Answer 23

partially dissociated
episodic - full dependence on hippocampus
semantic - support by sub-hippocampal structures

amnesiacs likely to have damage to both

Question 24

describe cohen and squire (1980) decl and proc

Answer 24

delarative vs procedural memory

amnesiac difficult form declarative mem but not non decl/rpocedural ie motor skill usually maintained

Question 25

describe schatt et al (2005)

Answer 25

found activation in different regions of the brain dependent on a declarative or procedural task
but - many skills require both

Question 26

describe chun and phelps (1999)

Answer 26

visual search tasks for amnesiacs and cotnrol
search for T in Ls
given only display or new changed display each time

control - improve skill and sig better in old

amnesia - improve skill but no better in old (always new to them)
hippocampus binds info - can do implicit tasks as long as doesnt involve binding

Question 27

define binding

Answer 27

integration of info and skills

Question 28

limitations of amnesia studies

Answer 28

hard to tell onset and trajectory of amnesia as develop over time
causes unique
cases unique - diff location, extent etc
no average level pre-amnesia to compare to