Brain Trauma Flashcards
Amnesia
The loss of memory that usually results from shock, psychological trauma, brain injury or illness.
Alzheimer’s disease
This neurodegenerative disease occurs mostly in old age and involves gradual, severe memory loss, confusion, impaired attention, disordered thinking and depression It involves both anterograde and retrograde amnesia because the disease a ects both the hippocampus and the pre-frontal cortex.
Anterograde amnesia
Anterograde amnesia is the inability to encode and store new memories. Typically, people can retrieve memories they had prior to the trauma but cannot learn anything new. This amnesia is commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Damage to the temporal lobe and hippocampus is often related to anterograde amnesia. These structures are involved in the consolidation process, especially for encoding and storage of long-term declarative memories.
Aneurysm
A bulge in the wall of a blood vessel, usually an artery, that can rupture causing damage to surrounding tissue and a decrease of blood flow to the area the vessel feeds if untreated.
Brain trauma
Some form of injury to the brain; for example, occurring as a result of an accident, an illness or surgery.
Basal forebrain
A structure of the brain located near the bottom of the inner frontal lobe that is responsible for producing acetylcholine, which is an important neurotransmitter for learning and memory. Damage to the basal forebrain such as an aneurysm can cause amnesia.
Diencaphalon
A structure of the brain situated between the two central hemispheres consisting of the thalamus, hypothalamus and pineal gland.
Declarative memory
A memory that requires conscious e ort to recall that can either be episodic or sematic. Also known as explicit memory.
Episodic memory
A type of declarative/explicit memory that involves personal events.
Explicitly memory
A memory that requires conscious e ort to recall that can be episodic or semantic. Also known as a declarative memory.
Hippocampus
An inner structure of the brain found in the medial temporal lobe that encodes explicit memories.
Implicitly memory
A memory that is unconsciously (or passively) retrieved involuntarily, for example, procedural memories.
Neurodegenerative
A disease that results in progressive loss of structure or function and/or death of neurons. Examples include Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
Long term memory
The final store of memory according to the Atkinson-Shiffrin Model in which an unlimited amount of information is stored for an unlimited amount of time.
Semantic memory
A type of declarative/explicit memory that consists of fact or information, for example, a memory of the city in which the previous Olympic Games were held.
Procedural memory
A type of implicit memory that involves knowing how to do things (skills), for example, riding a bike.
Symptoms of Alzheimer’s
Impaired declarative memory:
Difficulty remembering events from the day before,
forgets names
difficulty finding the right word when speaking.
Recognising familiar people and family members
–personality change
– Confusion and disorientation
– Repetition
Retrograde amnesia
an inability to retrieve previously stored memories.
Amyloid plaques
proteins that form among axon terminals and interfere with communication between neurons
Neurofibrillary tangles
an abnormal build-up of protein inside the neurons
Alzheimer’s disease fancy stuff
Amyloid plaques typify Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, patients’ brains have neuro brillary tangles and these are associated with the death of brain cells. Alzheimer’s patients also have lower levels of important memory neurotransmitters, especially acetylcholine.
How alzheimers effects the brain
One of the first brain structures to be a ected by Alzheimer’s disease is the hippocampus. When the cells are lost here, it causes the brain to atrophy (shrink) and the damage to the temporal lobes means that the hippocampus becomes isolated. This is probably why there is early memory loss (Hyman et al., 1984). Plaques and tangles
