Amnesia, brain damage and Alzheimer's disease

Question 1

Amnesia

Answer 1

The loss of memory that is inconsistent with ordinary forgetting
Can be partial or complete, temporary or permanent

Question 2

Brain trauma

Answer 2

Brain trauma is any brain damage that impairs, or interferes with, the normal functioning of the brain, either temporary or permanent

Question 3

Two types of brain damage

Answer 3

Inflicted like a blow to the head

Acquired like brain infection, stroke or drug abuse

Question 4

Neurodegenerative disease

Answer 4

A disorder characterised by the progressive decline in structure, activity and function of brain tissue.
Example: Alzheimer’s disease

Question 5

Anterograde amnesia

Answer 5

Effects events that occur after the injury/trauma occurs
Cannot form or store new explicit long term memories
Associated with damage to the hippocampus
Cannot transfer STM to LTM
Usually permanent
Can sometimes remember memories before brain injury
Usually don’t remember new information for more than a very short period
Common symptom for Alzheimer’s disease
Does not have trouble forming new implicit memories
Can learn new procedural motor skills
results from a failure of memory encoding and storage because of disruption to consolidation
New information is processed but almost immediately forgotten

Question 6

Henry Molaison

Answer 6

Had severe epilepsy
2/3 of each hippocampus was removed
Most of each amygdala was removed
Success in preventing his seizures
Personality was unchanged
Could still form new STM, procedural memories and implicit memories
Had permanent anterograde amnesia so he couldn’t form new declarative long term memories
Incapable of forming new episodic or semantic memories
Couldn’t experience sadness, only surprise
Had some retrograde amnesia
Became evident that the hippocampus and temporal lobe have a role in memory formation but not storage or retrieval
became evidence that LTM is a sub system of memory
Provided evidence that explicit and implicit memories are different

Question 7

Alzheimer’s disease

Answer 7

Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease that causes widespread cell death and is characterised by memory loss, decline in all aspects of cognitive function, a decline in social skills and personality changes
Explicit episodic and semantic and procedural memories are impaired
Earliest symptom is usually impaired explicit memory
- patient has difficulty remembering events from the day before, forgets names and has difficulty finding the right words when speaking

Question 8

Symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease

Answer 8

memory loss of events, words, names, directions, stories, movies etc
Semantic memory will decline
procedural memories are the last type of memory to go
Personality changes occur

Question 9

What do post-mortems reveal:

Answer 9

Atrophied cortical areas, deposits of amyloid plaque and neurofibrillary tangles

Question 10

Atrophied cortical areas

Answer 10

when the brain has shrunk

Question 11

Deposits of amyloid plaque

Answer 11

proteins that form among axon terminals and interfere with communication between neurons

Question 12

Neurofibrillary tangles

Answer 12

an abnormal build-up of protein inside neurons
these are associated with the death of brain cells
formed within the soma and kills the neuron itself

Question 13

Where in the brain does plaques and tangles cause most memory problems and difficulties with attention and motor coordination?

Answer 13

In the frontal lobe

Question 14

Which brain structure is first affected with Alzheimer’s disease?

Answer 14

the hippocampus