Brain Regions Involved

Question 1

Hippocampus

Answer 1

Hippocampus
• Located in the medial temporal lobe
Roles:
• Consolidates explicit memories, including episodic and semantic memories.
• Transfers new memories to relevant parts of the cerebral cortex for permeant long term storage (not stored in the hippocampus itself)
• interacts with the amygdala in the formation of emotional memories. i.e, hippocampus is involved in the explicit component (when, where etc) of the emotional memory

Damage
• Inability to form and retrieve new long- term explicit memories.
• People with damage to the hippocampus will be able to carry out procedural skills as this is implicit memory
• However, they will not remember that they have done it because the memory of the event is an explicit memory

Question 2

Amygdala

Answer 2

Amygdala
- Located in the medial temporal lobes.
Roles:
- Consolidation and retrieval of implicit emotional memories especially fear and aggression
- Also plays a significant role in implicit memories in relation to classically conditioned fear responses.
- Damage:
- Trouble forming and retrieving implicit, emotional memories (i.e. fear responses).
- If an amygdala was removed, someone with a fear of fire due to a house fire would be aware of being scared of fire, but would not display fear of it.

Question 3

cerebral cortex

Answer 3

Cerebral Cortex
- Thin outer, wrinkly layer of neural tissue that covers the cerebellum. Divided into two hemispheres, each of which has four hemispheres.
Roles:
- Storage of all explicit memories, and the storage of implicit procedural memories after they have been temporarily stored in the cerebellum
- Memories are stored where information was first processed
- When the memory is retrieved each of the separate parts are gathered together and reconstructed into a conscious memory.
Damage:
- Trouble storing explicit, long-term memories

Question 4

cerebellum

Answer 4

Cerebellum
- Located at the back of the brain, just above the spinal cord.
Roles:
- Temporary storage of procedural memory.
- Responsible for forming and temporary storage of implicit memories related to simple classical conditioned reflexes. Eg; salivating to a bell
- -Encoding implicit procedural memories of motor skills involved in everyday tasks (ie; brushing teeth, throwing a ball).
Damage:
- Trouble forming and retrieving implicit, simple motor responses.