Chapter 11 - Memory Flashcards
Memory
A change in behavior that results from previous experience.
Short term memory
What you’re working with right now.
If you’re distracted, it’s gone.
Long term memory
Result of past experience.
Withstands distraction.
Lobotomy
An operation in which a lobe, or a major part of one, is separated from the rest of the brain by a large cut but is not removed.
Lobectomy
An operation in which a lobe, or a major part of one, is removed from the brain.
Retrograde amnesia
Loss of memory for events or information learned before the amnesia-inducing brain injury.
Anterograde amnesia
Loss of memory for events occurring after the amnesia-inducing brain injury.
Global amnesia
Amnesia for information presented in all sensory modalities.
Mnemonic
Memory related
Remote memory
Memory for events of the distant past.
Memory consolidation
The translation of short-term memories into long-term memories.
H.M.’s specific problem appeared to be a difficulty in ________.
Memory consolidation.
Explicit memories
Conscious long-term memories.
AKA declarative memories.
Implicit memories
Long-term memories demonstrated by improved test performance without conscious awareness.
Neuropsychological patients with a profile of mnemonic deficits similar to those of H.M., with preserved intellectual functioning, and with evidence of medial temporal lobe damage are said to suffer from __________.
Medial temporal lobe amnesia.
Repetition priming tests
Tests that assess implicit memory.
Explicit long-term memories come in two varieties:
- Semantic
- Episodic
Semantic memories
Explicit memories for general facts or information.
Episodic memories
Explicit memories for particular events (i.e., episodes) of one’s life.
People with medial temporal lobe amnesia have particular difficulty with ________.
Episodic memories.
Patients who have experienced global cerebral ischemia– that is, have experienced an interruption of blood supply to their entire brains– often suffer from ________.
Medial temporal lobe amnesia.
Transient global amnesia
Defined by its sudden onset in the absence of any obvious cause in otherwise normal adults. As in other cases of medial temporal amnesia, there is severe anterograde amnesia and moderate retrograde amnesia for explicit episodic memories.
However, for transient global amnesia, the amnesia is transient, typically lasting only between 4 to 6 hours.
Many hippocampal neurons are _____ cells.
Place
Place cells
Neurons that respond only when a subject is in specific locations.
Entorhinal cortex
An area of the medial temporal cortex that is a major source of neural signals to the hippocampus.
Amygdala
Thought to play a special role in memory for the emotional significance of experiences. Fear learning.
Patients with prefrontal cortex damage often have difficulty performing tasks that involve a series of responses. This is because they often show deficits in ________ and the temporal _______ of events.
working memory,
order
Just as explicit memories of experiences are presumed to be stored in the circuits of the brain that mediated their ________, implicit memories of sensorimotor learning are presumed to be stored in _________.
original perception,
sensorimotor circuits.
The cerebellum is thought to participate in the storage of memories of learned __________ through its various neuroplastic mechanisms.
sensorimotor skills
The ________ is thought to store memories for consistent relationships between stimuli and responses – the type of memories that develop incrementally over many trials.
striatum
Although few would disagree that the ______ and the ______ play a role in sensorimotor memory, there is growing evidence that these structures also play a role in certain types of memory with no obvious motor component.
cerebellum,
striatum.
Medial temporal lobe structure first implicated in spatial memory:
hippocampus
Area of medial temporal cortex that participates in spatial memory through its hippocampal projections:
entorhinal cortex
Large area of cortex that plays a role in object recognition: _____ temporal cortex.
medial
Medial diencephalic nucleus that has been linked to Korsakoff’s amnesia: ______
mediodorsal nucleus
Cholinergic area that has been linked to the memory problems of Alzheimer’s disease: ______
basal forebrain
Large area of neocortex that participates in visual perception and memory for visual stimuli:
inferotemporal cortex
Medial temporal lobe structure involved in the emotional significance of memories:
amygdala
Large cortical area involved in memory for temporal order and in working memory:
prefrontal cortex
Mesencephalic structure that has been implicated in the retention of eye-blink conditioning and other learned sensorimotor skills:
cerebellum
Subcortical structure that has been linked to habit formation:
striatum
Long-term potentiation (LTP)
The enduring facilitation of synaptic transmission that occurs following activation of synapses by high-intensity, high-frequency stimulation of the presynaptic neurons.
LTP develops only if the firing of the _______ is followed by the firing of the ________.
presynaptic neuron,
postsynaptic neuron.
The assumption the co-occurence is a physiological necessity for learning and memory is often referred to as _______.
Hebb’s postulate for learning
The ______ receptor is prominent at the synapses at which LTP is commonly studied.
NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate)
The NMDA receptor is a receptor for ______- the main excitatory neurotransmitter of the brain.
glutamate
An NMDA receptor does not respond maximally unless two events occur simultaneously:
glutamate must bind to it, and the postsynaptic neuron must already be partially depolarized.
Infantile amnesia
The normal inability to recall events from early childhood.
Nootropics, or smart drugs
substances (drugs, supplements, herbal extracts, etc.) that are thought to improve memory.
Korsakoff’s syndrome
A neuro-psychological disorder that is common in alcoholics and whose primary symptom is severe memory loss.
What is an advantage of having explicit memory?
Flexibility. Presumably, the evolution of explicit memory systems provided for the flexible use of information.
Repetition priming tests
Tests of implicit memory; in one example, a list of words is presented, then fragments of the original words are presented and the subject is asked to complete them.
Electroconvolsive shock (ECS)
An intense, brief, diffuse, seizure-inducing current that is administered to the brain through large electrodes attached to the scalp. Used for studying memory consolidation. ECS would erase from storage only those memories that had not yet been converted to structural synaptic changes. The length of the period of retrograde amnesia produced by an ECS would thus provide an estimate of the amount of time needed for memory consolidation.
Standard consolidation theory
Theory that memories are temporarily stored in the hippocampus until they can be transferred to a more stable cortical storage system.
Engram
A change in the brain that stores a memory.
H.M. Had his _______ temporal lobes removed
Medial
The mirror drawing test, the incomplete pictures test, and the repetition priming test are all tests of _____ memory.
Implicit
H.M. was virtually incapable of forming new long term ______ memories.
explicit
Support for the view that hippocampal damage can by itself cause amnesia comes from the study of R.B. who suffered _______ damage to the pyramidal cells of his CA1 hippocampal subfield.
ischemia
The current view is that damage to the _______ diencephalon is responsible for the most of the memory deficits of people with Korsakoff’s disease.
medial
The gradual onset of Korsakoff’s syndrome complicates the study of the resulting ______ amnesia.
retrograde
The _____ nuclei are the structures in the medial diencephalon that have been most frequently implicated in memory.
mediodorsal
Alzheimer’s disease is associated with degeneration of the basal forebrain and resulting depletion of _____.
acetylcholine
Post traumatic amnesia can be induced with _______ shock, which is used in the treatment of depression.
Electroconvulsive
The gradual increase in the resistance of memories to disruption by brain trauma (e.g., ECS) is termed ________.
consolidation
Because gradients of retrograde amnesia tend to be long, occurring over months or years, it is unlikely that memory consolidation is mediated by ________ neural activity, as hypothesized by Hebb.
reverberating
The changes in the brain that store memories are called ______.
engrams
The _______ is thought to store memories for consistent relationships between stimuli and responses– the type of memories that develop incrementally over many trials. Sometimes, this is referred to as _______.
Striatum,
Habit forming.
Working memory
the part of short-term memory that is concerned with immediate conscious perceptual and linguistic processing
