Exam 4 Flashcards
Damage to which brain area causes amnesia?
The Hippocampus
Hippocampal damage causes amnesia, a disorder of long-term memory
Amnesia
the inability to from most new long-term memories
Which famous patient did we study to assess the effects of amnesia?
H.M.
What type of memory does amnesia effect? Why is this?
Long-term memory
It results from extensive damage to the medial temporal lobe as well as an area closely related to the midline diencephalic region
Damage to the middle diencephalic region may cause?
Korsakoff’s disease
Following chronic alcohol abuse or sometimes through an accident
Bilateral hippocampal damage results in what?
results in a general impairment across all types of materials
Unilateral hippocampal damage
leads to deficits in memory for verbal material after left hemisphere damage or non-verbal material after right hemisphere damage
Retrograde amnesia
impairment in memory for the info that was acquired prior to the event that caused the amnesia
Anterograde amnesia
is the deficit in learning new information after the onset of amnesia
Virtually always occurs with some retrograde amnesia
Which is characterized by a temporal gradient?
Retrograde amnesia
Which is associated with episodic memory?
Retrograde amnesia
Patients with amnesia will have some spared memory. What types of memory are spared?
Working memory
Skill learning
What is skill learning?
The ability to learn a skill without consciously realizing it
Explicit memory
permits the conscious recollection or prior experience and facts
The memory system that is lost in amnesia
Implicit memory
allows prior experience to affect behavior without the individual consciously retrieving the memory or even being aware of it
Declarative memory is associated with which brain structure?
Hippocampus
What is procedural memory?
Supports memory of “how” something should be done, allows skill-learning
What is relational learning and when does it occur?
Occurs in tasks or situations where performance depends on acquiring memory for the relations among items
What is long term potentiation?
Pattern activation of particular pathways produces a stable increase in synaptic efficacy for hours to weeks
Place cells
cells fire in the hippocampus to the relative location within the environment
Grid cells
in the entorhinal cortex fire when the animal is in certain locations in the environment, aligned with a hexagonal grid
Time cells
in the hippocampus provide information on the temporal associations. They fire to the same relative “location” but it is location in time, not space
The basal ganglia has neurons associated with which neurotransmitter?
Dopaminergic neurons (dopamine)
Under what conditions will dopaminergic neurons fire?
They increase cell firing to unpredicted reward
They decrease cell firing to predicted rewards that don’t occur
What is contextual fear conditioning?
A fear response that is selective to the context, or environment, in which conditioning occurs
How is fear conditioning related to amygdala activity?
There is increased amygdala activation associated with fear conditioning
Bilateral damage to the amygdala causes what?
It wipes out the enhancement of memory for emotional information, but does not affect memory for neutral information
The anterior temporal regions are involved in explicit/declarative memory. What are the two types and what type of memory do they involve?
Two types of explicit/declarative memory:
Semantic memory: refers to knowledge that allows us to form and retain facts, concepts, and categories
Episodic memory: refers to autobiographical memories about specific episodes in our lives
What is semantic dementia?
Where patients aggressively lose the ability to retain semantic information
The most notable pathology in this disorder is degradation of the anterior temporal regions
What are the stages of memory processing?
- Memories have to be created- information must be encoded into memory
- Memories must be stored, or maintained over time
- While they are stored, they have to undergo consolidation
- For a memory to be used we need to be able to retrieve it
What brain area Helps by ensuring that highly similar and overlapping representations are encoded in a way such as to make them more distinct?
Hippocampus
What Aids in selecting information that is most relevant for encoding from among many pieces of a given episode?
Ventrolateral prefrontal region
What Seems to be especially important for encoding information when information must be reordered or rearranged?
Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
Consolidation model
argues that the hippocampal system is required not only to lay down memories, but also to consolidate them
Multiple trace theory
argues that there is no prolonged consolidation period, as the hippocampus encodes the different aspects of any experience and binds them together
What is pattern completion? Which brain structure is involved? Does it involve long or short-term memory?
Pattern completion: one smaller piece of information can be used to reconstitute the whole
Ex: remembering a point in time when you last walked into your apartment may help you reconstitute the event so you can remember where you placed your keys
The hippocampus may be involved in the reactivation of Long-term memories
Recognition relies on which parts of the brain?
The perirhinal cortex and connections with the dorsal medial nucleus
Recall relies on which parts of the brain?
The hippocampus and related midline diencephalic structures
role of the prefrontal cortex in retrieval
Retrieval of unwanted memories
Damage here does not lead to severe memory deficits
Patients with this damage have less confidence in their memory recall and are less likely to use retrieval cues
The lesion of the left temporoparietal area in patient K.F. led to an impairment in what type of memory?
It led to impairment of auditory-verbal working memory, or what is known as the phonological store (inner monologue)
What are the differences in function between the input phonological buffer and output phonological buffer?
Input phonological buffer: holds auditory verbal information received by the listener on-line while is an utterance being parsed
Output phonological buffer: holds the phonological code on-line as a speaker is preparing his or her utterance
Working memory
The ability to hold and manipulate information online
What brain region plays a critical role in working memory?
Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)
Do patients with prefrontal damage show difficulties on working memory tasks?
No
Interactions between prefrontal and posterior regions support what kind of memory?
Working memory
What is maintenance of information another name for?
Short-term memory
What kind of memory involves the important addition of mental “work” that is performed by the central executive?
Working memory
Generalized learning
- Generalizes across different experiences via general statistical learning
- the rate of learning is slow and incremental
Specific episodes
- uniquely combines many different specific different pieces of information to identify a unique event
- rate of learning is quick and representation must be discrete from prior instances
What are the four types of attention?
- alertness
- vigilance
- selective attention
- divided attention
What is alertness and arousal?
- the most basic level of attention
- A coma is an extreme example: can extract little or no information from the environment
What is vigilance?
The ability to maintain alertness continuously over time
- ex: when you must pay attention over an entire 1-hour class
What is selective attention?
The selection of information essential to a task (it is goal driven to a certain extent)
ex: when you try to attend a conversation while ignoring the music in the background
What is divided attention?
Multitasking, when attention is split across tasks
Ex: driving and holding a conversation at the same time
Which brain system is responsible for overall arousal and controls sleep-wake cycles?
The ascending reticular activating system (ARAS)
This signal arises from rostral regions of the anterior cingulate, occurs approximately 100 ms after an error has been made and its value positively correlates with the size of the error.
A. Self-monitoring
B. Error-related negativity (ERN)
C. Error positivity (Pe)
D. Interoception
B. Error-related negativity (ERN)
Someone with damage to the medial temporal lobe (which includes the hippocampus) would experience which condition?
A. Loss of short-term memory
B. Loss of long-term memory
C. Loss of working memory
D. Skill learning
B. Loss of long-term memory
A person attends a concert. The next day she experiences a traumatic brain injury that causes her hippocampus to be damaged. She is now unable to remember who sang at the concert. What type of amnesia do you diagnose her with?
A. Retrograde amnesia
B. Anterograde amnesia
A. Retrograde amnesia
The conscious recollection of your childhood address would be classified as what type of memory?
A. Procedural memory
B. Implicit memory
C. Explicit memory
C. Explicit memory
Long-term potentiation (LTP) produces an increase in synaptic efficacy that can last from hours to weeks.
A. True
B. False
A. True
Patients with damage to this brain structure will display symptoms opposite to those shown by patients with hippocampal damage.
A. Entorhinal cortex
B. Amygdala
C. Medial temporal lobe
D. Basal ganglia
D. Basal ganglia
Which neurotransmitter is involved in the function of the basal ganglia during trial and error learning?
A. Norepinephrine
B. Dopamine
C. Epinephrine
D. GABA
B. Dopamine
Which area of the brain is involved in associating stimuli with emotional responses?
A. Hippocampus
B. Basal ganglia
C. Amygdala
D. Prefrontal cortex
C. Amygdala
Knowing that Paris is the capital of France is a type of memory modulated by which brain region?
A. Parahippocampal place area
B. Anterior temporal region
C. Posterior temporal region
D. Frontal lobe
B. Anterior temporal region
Which part of the medial temporal lobe plays a role in encoding information about objects and their identities?
A. Retrosplenial cortex
B. Parahippocampal gyrus
C. Perirhinal cortex
D. Entorhinal cortex
E. Hippocampus
C. Perirhinal cortex
The anterior or posterior region of the hippocampus is involved in retrieval?
Posterior
What memory system is lost in amnesia?
Explicit memory
