Biological bases and Memory Flashcards
What did Baddeley & Hitch argue and do?
Baddeley and Hitch argued that the model of STM is too simple, so they proposed that there are four components to STM:
- Central Executive
-Visuospatial sketchpad
-Phonological loop
-Episodic buffer
Episodic memory is?
Memory of personal life experiences
Sensory memory is?
Sensory memory comes before STM, lasts about 0.3-3 seconds
What does memory involve?
-Encoding
-Storage
-Retrieval
What is chunking?
Grouping items into larger units of meaning
Who is Patient H.M and what did he suffer from?
Patient H.M is Henry Molaison and he suffered from a bike crash at 9 years old and developed seizures, retrograde amnesia and then dense anterograde amnesia with intact STM
What is emotional memory?
Emotion-memory interactions are often important in the making of episodic memories
What study to Peterson & Peterson conduct?
Number retention with variation intervals
What is autobiographical memory?
Memory for one’s personal history (semantic and episodic memory)
What does the serial position effect show?
The primacy and recency effect, rhyming words are bad for STM, meaning words are bad for LTM
What did Atkinson & Shiffrins multi-store model of memory show?
STM is limited to 7+-2, limited capacity, and LTM has a big capacity and very slow forgetting
Miller (1956)
The magic number, memory span stimuli
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909)
First person to investigate memory, created the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve
What is semantic memory?
The recollection of ideas, concepts or facts
What is blocking/retrieval failure?
Absentmindedness/ encoding failure, which is the result of shallow encoding of events usually due to a failure to pay attention.
What is transience/ memory decay?
Form of trace decay, a change in the biology memory trace which weakens connections between neurons.
What is a habit?
Habit formation is a process by which behavioural control shifts from goal dependent to context dependent.
What is explicit memory?
Conscious memory involving recalling previously learned information, requiring conscious effort and verbally explained facts or semantic knowledge
What is implicit memory?
Unconscious /automatic memory which operates without awareness such as knowing how to ride a bike
What is priming?
Exposure to one stimulus influences how a person responds to a related stimulus, activating an association or representation in memory
What is memory distortion?
Misattributing or incorrectly recalling the origin of a specific event, could be caused by bias or suggestibility
What is retroactive interference?
New learning interferes with old learning
What is proactive interference?
Old learning interferes with new learning
Types of procedural or implicit memory?
-Skill learning
-Habits
-Priming
-Conditioning
What is the function of the brain?
The brain is the organ of interpretation and prediction
What factors influence encoding?
-Elaborative rehearsal
-Relating new info to info in LTM
What happened to Fernando Alonso?
Race car crash, woke up and thought it was 1995 in 2010, had developed retrograde amnesia.
What is the central nervous system?
The brain and the spinal cord system
What is the peripheral nervous system?
Nerves from the brain and the spinal cord that send info to the rest of our body
What is anterograde amnesia?
The inability to create new memories after an event that caused amnesia
What is retrograde amnesia?
The loss of past memories after an event that caused amnesia i.e. loss of memories before the event
What is the method of loci?
Items to be remembered are visualised in specific, well-known places, localising memories for things such as a grocery list
What is working memory? (STM)
VSS, AL and EB
What is VSS?
Visuospatial sketchpad (images)
What is AL?
Articulatory loop/ Phonological loop (sound)
What is EB?
Episodic buffer
What is consolidation?
The strengthening of a trace over time, encoding-storage-retrieval-consolidation
What is a schema?
An example of prior knowledge, a mental framework or organised pattern of thought about some aspect of the world
What are the two depths of processing?
Shallow processing: sound, shape
Deep processing: meaning (semantic structure)
What are the four lobes of the brain?
-frontal lobe
-parietal lobe
-temporal lobe
-occipital lobe
What is the function of the frontal lobe?
Decision making and complex processes
What is the function of the temporal lobe?
Memory
What is the function of the parietal lobe?
Determining your space/ movement/ spatial awareness
What is the function of the occipital lobe?
Vision and visual information
What did Stein and Bransford do?
Conducted a study that showed that the least accurately recalled sentence was a base sentence, and the most accurately recalled sentence was a base and elaborated sentence, therefore meaningful things are remembered better for STM.
What is the function of the hippocampus?
The hippocampus encodes experiences
What is the function of the ‘light switch’?
Light controls the body clock by activating the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN)
1. light goes in eyes
2. recognition in the pineal gland
3. SCN synchronizing
What is the function of the creative sweet spot?
Sleep stage 1 (NREM-N1) is associated with involuntary spontaneous dream-like experiences that incorporate recent wake experiences (hypnagogia)
What is declarative memory enhanced by?
SWS rich sleep
What is procedural memory enhanced by?
Late or REM rich sleep
What did Michael Siffre do?
Went underground and deprived himself of info for night and day, resulted in 25 hour sleep wake cycle
What is a circadian rhythm?
Physical, mental and behavioural changes an organism experiences over a 24 hour cycle
What is the function of the hypothalamus?
A critical region in the brain that is involved in basic bodily functions such as:
-body temperature
-appetite
-thirst
-sexual activity
What is the sleep cycle pattern?
- Awake
- Drowsy
- Stage 1 sleep
- Stage 2 sleep
- Slow wave sleep SWS (stage 3)
- REM sleep
What is the function of the suprachiasmatic nucleus SCN?
Within the hypothalamus is a small region that controls the sleep/ wake cycle.
What does Tetrodotoxin (TTX) do?
Blocks the ion flow through channels that generate action potential.
What is a graded potential?
A temporary change in the membranes voltage
What is an action potential?
A rapid change in the electrical charge of a neurons membrane.
Where does a graded potential occur?
Dendrites
Where does an action potential occur?
Axons
What is a neuron?
A specialised nerve cell that are the brains processing units
What is the function of synapse?
Synapse is the name of the connection for neurons, it is how neurons are transmitted electrically from axons to dendrites.
What is an agonist?
Drugs that bind to a receptor of a cell, mimicking the action of a naturally occurring substance
What is an antagonist?
Drugs that block or suppress agonist-medicated responses.
What is a schizophrenia-positive symptom?
-Delusions
-Hallucinations
-Disorganised thinking
What is a schizophrenia-negative symptom?
-Blunted affect
-Poverty of speech and thought
-Apathy
What outcome do you get if you suppress dopamine in schizophrenics?
A positive outcome
What happens to your dopamine levels when you develop Parkinson’s?
In Parkinson’s you’re losing the ability to transmit/ produce dopamine into other areas, therefore Parkinson’s is treated with dopamine agonists i.e. drugs that mimic dopamine
