Chapter 7 Flashcards
Medial temporal lobe?
The inner surfaces of the temporal lobes, containing the hippocampus and other cortical areas.
Episodic memory?
A memory for a specific autobiographical event. Where and when something occurred.
Semantic memory?
Memories for facts or general knowledge as well as personal information.
Semantic memory can be strengthened by ____.
Repetition.
Episodic and semantic memories share what 2 key features?
Can be communicated flexibly, consciously accessible.
Skill memories are generally not easy to ____ unlike semantic and episodic memories.
Communicate flexibly.
Metamemory?
Our knowledge of, and ability to think about our own memories. (If someone asks you for the weight of a boron atom, you right away know that you don’t know the answer.
Declarative VS non declarative memory?
Declarative can be verbalized/communicated, whilst the latter (including skill memories and other types or learning that don’t include semantic/episodic memory) that are not easy to verbalize/communicate.
Explicit memory?
Can be consciously recalled. (Memory of falling off your bike)
Implicit memory?
Can’t be consciously recalled. (How to ride a bike or balance)
Episodic memory is acquired when/how?
In a single exposure; the event itself.
How can you weaken episodic memory?
Repeated exposures of similar events (big parking lott)
Endel Tulving argued what about episodic memory?
He said episodic memory grows out of semantic memory… this means that an organism has to have a certain amount of semantic information before episodic memories can be built on that framework (i.e., you need to know what a graduation is before you can have an episodic memory for any specific graduation)
Are episodic and semantic memories independent?
Yes. They can affect one another.
HM’s story?
Had frequent epileptic seizures. Doctors knew the seizures started in either the right or left hemisphere, but his were so severe they couldn’t locate it. So they removed both temporal lobes. Had anterograde amnesia.
Radial arm maze?
a maze with a central area from which several arms branch off like the spokes of a wheel. The top of the maze is open so a rat placed in the maze can see out and use landmarks in the room, such as the placement of windows or posters, to help navigate.
Episodic memory requires a…?
Mental time travel, a re-experience of the event
Does mere exposure to information guarantee memory?
No.
Memory is better for information that ____ to prior knowledge.
Relates.
____ processing at encoding improved recognition later.
Deeper (the more deeply you analyze information)
Depth of processing effect?
Deeper processing at encoding of new information improved the ability to remember that information later on.
Experiments show that people are more likely to remember words if they are forced to think about their ____ content.
Semantic.
Criticism of depth of processing effect?
It is vague. How can we be sure it is deep processing?
Participants recognize more words from an image condition than from a pronounce condition.
fMRI scans show that during encoding phase the image condition showed more activity.
Tip of the tongue phenomenon?
When information temporarily inaccessible. You try to remember the name of something but can’t remember the word.
Transfer appropriate processing?
Refers to the finding that retrieval is more likely to be successful if the cues available at recall are similar to those that were available at encoding
Free recall? Cued recall? Recognition?
Free Recall → in which you are simply asked an open-ended question and you supply the answer from memory (What is the Latin word for “arch”?)
Cued Recall → in which you are given some kind of prompt or clue to the correct answer (What is the Latin word for “arch”? f_____)
Recognition → in which you pick out the correct answer from a list of possible options (What is the Latin word for “arch”? A = fenestra, B = fornix, or C = fundus)
In general free recall is harder than cued recall, which is harder than recognition.
Passive forgetting?
Older information is more likely to be forgotten than recently acquired information. Hermann Ebbinghaus concluded most forgetting occurs first few days/hours after learning. Larry Squire noticed people forgot shows that were old.
Directed forgetting?
Occurs when we intentionally try to suppress a memory.
Interference?
When two memories overlap in content, the strength of either or both memories may be reduced.
Proactive interference: when old information can disrupt new learning
oE.g. When you change to a new computer password and type the old one by mistake for the first few times
— Retroactive interference: when new information can disrupt old learning
oE.g. Once you master the new password, you may have some trouble remembering your old one
— A tip for remembering the difference:
oPRoactive interference = PReviously acquired information is at fault
oREtroactive interference = REcently acquired information is at fault
Memory misattribution?
When we remember information but mistakenly associate it with an incorrect source.
Source amnesia?
When we remember information but cannot remember the source at all.
Cryptomnesia?
When someone thinks their thoughts are original but they actually learned it from someone else. Participants got letters and had to make words from them and they played against the computer. They came up with 10% of the same words that the computer came up with.
False memories?
Memories of events that never actually happened. Scientists came up with stories about participants’ pasts and the participants (25%) believed it actually happened to them.
Consolidation period?
A time window during which new memories are vulnerable and easily lost. If you can still remember something in a month, you’ll probably remember it for even longer.
Duncan (1949)
— Trained rats to make a simple conditioned response
— Then gave the rats electroconvulsive shock: a brief pulse of electricity passed through the brain via electrodes on each side of the head
— If shock given 20 seconds after end of training → rats’ memory of the conditioned response was severely disrupted
— If shock given an hour+ after training → little disruption
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT)
Electroconvulsive shock administered to humans as a temporary relief from certain mental illnesses, particularly severe depression.
Semantic memories are stored in the ____.
Cerebral cortex.
Sensory cortex?
Cortical areas that specialized in one kind of sensory information (auditory, visual, somatosensory)
Association cortex?
Cortical areas involved in associating information within and across modalities. I.e. Linking the word dog with the visual image of a dog with semantic information about what dogs are like.
Agnosia?
Selective disruption of the ability to process a particular kind of semantic information.
Auditory agnosia?
Can hear sounds and echo them but not understand their meaning.
Associative visual agnosia?
Difficulty recognizing and naming objects, even though they can see them.
Tactile agnosia?
Can recognize an object by sight or description, but not feel.
It is believed we have neuron networks that respond to certain categories of things i.e. Actors, fruit, pointy landmarks.
This explains reason behind selective agnosia.
EP and HMs brains looked ____.
Similar.
EP had ____ amnesia.
Anterograde.
Beth study.
Beth had no memory for autobiographical events. Structural MRI showed her hippocampus was smaller than normal on both sides. She could still read write go to school. Her hippocampal damage was acquired at birth.
Hippocampus is necessary for the acquisition of what type of information? And not necessary for what type?
Autobiographical or episodic. Semantic.
Semantic learning depends on medial temporal areas:
Entorhinal cortex and perirhinal cortex.
Anthony Wagner -> subsequent memory paradigm study?
Participants viewed a list of words and had to say whether it was abstract or concrete. Incidental encoding phase -> fMRI takes images of brain activity during the initial phase of encoding new information. Then when asked to recall which words were the same to a new list they could barely recall any. fMRI activity during the incidental encoding phase differs for words that will not be successfully recognized later compared with words that will not.
Left medial temporal lobe is more active during incidental encoding of words that are remembered compared with words that are forgotten
- Medial temporal lobe is more active during incidental encoding of pictures that will be remembered than pictures that will be forgotten
- Pictures activate the medial temporal lobe bilaterally
- Pictures and words that are processed more elaborately in the medial temporal lobes are more likely to be encoded and remembered
True
Hippocampus plays a role in the “what happened where” aspect of episodic memory.
It is more active when the word and the source are recalled.
- Posterior parahippocampal gyrus responds more strongly to studied words than to novel words
- Posterior parahippocampal gyrus does not respond to theme words
- Posterior parahippocampal gyrus can distinguish true episodic memories from false episodic memories
True
Theodore Ribot discovered that people with ____ injuries developed retrograde amnesia.
Head.
Ribot gradient?
Retrograde memory loss worse for events that occurred shortly before the injury than for events that occurred in the distant past.
Multiple memory trace theory?
It posits that each time some information is presented to a person, it is neurally encoded in a unique memory trace composed of a combination of its attributes.
Consolidation theory
predicts that in normal memory function, hippocampal activity should be greatest for recently acquired memories and lowest for old memories
New memories are ____ on the hippocampus, whilst old memories are independent from the hippocampus.
Dependent.
Christine Smith and Larry Squire → asked individuals to recall events from 1 to 30 years ago while undergoing fMRI
Study found that hippocampus activity decreases as the age of the semantic memory increases from 1 to 12 years
- Study found that age of semantic memory is low during recall of memories from 13 to 30 years ago
- Consolidation period can last over a decade
____ frontal lobe was more active during incidental encoding of remembered information.
Left.
What does other prefrontal cortex areas suppressing hippocampal activity do?
Storage and retrieval of unwanted memories.
Directed forgetting task?
Participants were shown words and then were either told to remember or forget them. They remembered less of the ones they were told to forget.
Is the hippocampus more active during the remember or forget trials?
Remember.
Diencephalon
A brain area that lied near the core of the brain, just above the brainstem, and includes the thalamus, hypothalamus and mammillary bodies.
Fornix
A fiber bundle that connects portions of the diencephalon and basal forebrain to the hippocampus.
Damage to the basal forebrain, diencephalon or fornix causes ____ amnesia.
Anterograde.
Aneurysm
Type of stroke in which an artery wall balloons out under pressure and could rupture.
Basal forebrain receives blood and oxygen from the anterior communicating artery (ACoA). What is ACoA a common site for?
An aneurysm.
ACoA aneurysm rupture can cause?
Damager to basal forebrain and anterograde amnesia b
Medial septum sends acetylcholine and GABA to the hippocampus
This then affects the activity and synaptic plasticity of hippocampal neurons
These projections can help decide if and when the hippocampus will process and store information
True
Confabulation
Condition associated with some forms of amnesia in which individuals, when asked to remember past events, respond with highly detailed but false memories.
Confabulation tends to ____ over time.
Decrease.
Confabulation occurs in people with aneurysm damage that extends to the ____.
Frontal cortex.
Thiamine
Vitamin B
Korsanoffs disease damages 2 areas of the diencephalon:
Mammillary bodies and parts of the thalamus.
Korsakoff disease patients have:
Severe anterograde amnesia and confabulation.
Korsakoff’s disease
A condition caused by a deficiency in thiamine that sometimes accompanies chronic blood abuse.
Transmit Global Amnesia (TGA)
Transient or temporary disruption of memory. It usually disappears after one day.
Causes of transmit global amnesia?
Temporary blood flow interruption to the brain, low blood sugar, heart attack/stroke.
Transmit global amnesia patients show small hippocampus ____.
Abnormalities n
Functional amnesia
A sudden massive retrograde memory loss that seems to result from psychological causes. Also called psychogenic amnesia.
Organic amnesia
Retrograde amnesia that results from physical causes
Dissociative amnesia
Patients lose memory of specific, traumatic event
Dissociative fugue
Patients lose all memory of their identity
PN developed functional amnesia when his grandpa died.
He had severe retrograde amnesia as well as anterograde. One day he saw a funeral scene on TV and all his memories came flooding back.
PET shows that individuals with functional amnesia has abnormal activity patterns in medial temporal lobe and diencephalon areas
Functional amnesia may result from a malfunction of the brain areas involved in episodic memory storage and retrieval
fMRI study shows that two individuals with functional amnesia who failed to recognize one another has increased activity in the prefrontal cortex and decreased activity in the hippocampus
True
Operant conditioning.
One technique that is commonly used to train animals to perform skills.It is an effective method for training new skills, but it is not the only way
Perceptual motor skills
Learned movement patterns guiding by sensory inputs.
Closed skills vs open skills
Performing a predefined sequence of movements i.e. ballet vs participants responding based on predictions about the changing demands of the environment i.e. salsa
It is better to think of a ____ when it comes to open and closed skills.
Continuum.
Cognitive skill
Require you to solve problems or apply strategies rather than just move your body based on what you see i.e. tower of hanoi
Descartes claimed that the ability to reason is what distinguishes who from who?
Humans from animals.
Tools use perceptual-motor and ____ skill n
Cognitive.
Dolphins performing on TV is a ______. Recall and reenactment of past events is a ____ skill.
Closed perceptual motor skill. Cognitive.
Talent
Person who masters a skill with little effort.
Rotary pursuit task
Keep style at the edge of a rotating disk
Expert
Person who performs skill better than most people.
Testing in twins. Did the rotary pursuit task. What did they find?
The more practice people have, the more their differences are due to genetic differences.
Computers can be considered experts without ____.
Skills
Knowledge of results - Edward Thorndike line drawing blindfolded
Feedback about performance is critical t the effectiveness of the practice.
Power law of learning
the initial gain in performance is the largest, it holds for a wide range of cognitive and perceptual-motor skills, both in humans and other species.You become more proficient at a skill; there is less room for improvement. The rate at which practice loses its ability to improve performance does not depend on either the skill being practiced or the type of animal learning the skill.It is possible to overcome this law, and enhance the effects of practice.
Observational learning
observing performance techniques that they can use later to improve.All feedback is not equally helpful, and the kinds of feedback provided could strongly determine how practice affects performance.In frequent feedback for simple perceptual-motor tasks leads to good performance in the short term, but mediocre performance in long term, whereas infrequent feedback leads to mediocre performance in short term, but better performance in long term.
Massed practice
Concentrated continuous practice, generally produces better performance short term.
Spaced practice
Spread out practice over several sessions, leads to better retention in the long run
3 groups were trained to remember some shit for different amounts of hours.
The group that trained for 1 hour per day required less total hours to learn.
Constant practice
Practice with a very limited set if materials and skills
Variable pracitice
Practice with more varied materials and skills.
