Final Flashcards
Implicit Memory
Early Developing
Highly Functional at birth
Subcortical/Amygdala Bias
Amygdala: hub of putting all of these together to make rapid fight/flight decisions
Non-declarative (unspoken)
Emotional Sensory-Motor and Visceral (and Somatic)
context Free regarding time, space and self-awareness
Procedural learning, emotional responses, behavioral patterns and skill sets
Explicit Memory
Later Developing
Matures with Hippocampal and Cortical Structures
Cortical/Hippocampal Bias
Declarative/Semantic/Source Attribution Organized by Language
Related to Visual images
Contextualized within Episodic and Autobiographical Narratives
Conscious Organization of Experience Construction of a sense of self
What is the process of psychotherapy dependent on?
Memory
Fundamental goal of therapy
Make the unconscious conscious
State-dependent Memory
influence of emotional states in the organization of conscious memory
Define explicit memory
describes conscious learning and memory, including semantic, sensory and motor forms
Define implicit memory
reflected in unconscious patterns of learning stored in hidden layers of neural processing, largely inaccessible to conscious awareness
Explicit memory is the ____; implicit memory is the ____
Explicit memory is the tip of our experiential iceberg; implicit memory is the vast structure below the surface
The reptilian brain contains
instinctual memories, the lessons of past generations (genetic memory) that control reflexes and inner bodily functions
The paleomammalian brain
(limbic system) contributes emotional
memory and conditioned learning - mixture of primitive impulses and survival programs sculpted by experiences.
Neomammalian brain
unconscious in processing, contains networks responsible for explicit verbal memory biased toward the left hemisphere
Childhood amnesia
The absence of explicit memory from early life likely results from maturational delay and other developmental changes in how our brains process information
Source attribution
remembering how we learned something
Semantic memory includes
episodic, narrative and autobiographical
What is our first cortex
amygdala
What part of the brain is key in new learning
hippocampus
Opioid receptors
biochemical mechanisms of bonding and attachment behavior
Hypoxia
Lack of oxygen
Amygdala is involved in___and the Hippocampus is involved in___
generalization; discrimination
Define Nachtraglichkeit
the ability to reconceptualize a memory based on evolving maturity; requires holding the memory in mind without being emotionally overwhelmed and simultaneously bringing it into the present
What are the 8 problematic aspects of brain functioning
- suppression of language and predictive capacity under stress
- divergent hemispheric processing
- the bias toward early learning
- the tenacity of fear
- The damaging effects of stress hormones
- The speed and amount of unconscious processing
- The primacy of projection
- Unconscious self-deception
What is Broca’s area responsible for
speech production; contributes to networks of prediction and anticipation
What is the talking cure
stimulates language networks and encourages the creation of adaptive narratives about traumatic experience
Neophobia
The fear of anything new
How quickly can the amygdala react to a potential threat
less than 50 milliseconds
Mirror neurons link observations and actions, allowing us
- learn from others by watching them
- anticipate and predict actions
- activate emotional stress supportive of emotional resonance and empathy
Countertransferential
engagement in a parallel process whenever we explore how much of our reaction to a client
Capgras syndrome
syndrome of suspecting impostors
Dysrhythmia
brainwaves in networks responsible for matching faces with emotional familiarity
Learning and Memory
are evolved in the service of survival, are modulated by experience, have multiple forms and functions, have multiple evolutionary and developmental courses
Differential Neuroplasticity
- implicit memory is designed to be permanent
- explicit memory is designed to be updated
- the amygdala and hippocampus have different neuroplastic properties
Characteristics of Traumatic Memory
- occurs when the stimulus barrier is surpassed
- inhibition of explicit memory systems
- regression to implicit systems
- similar in nature to early memory
Flashbacks and Flashbulbs
- grounded in procedural memory
- sensory - motor - somatic
- no source attribution
- no cortical control
- no lessening of intensity with the passage of time
Motivated Forgetting
Controlling unwanted memories is associated with: 1. increased dorsolateral prefrontal activation 2. decreased hippocampal activation
Left prefrontal cortex guides controlled semantic retrieval
Amnesia and lack of recall for emotionally salient
Deficits in Extinction, learning in PTSD
- Amygdala disinhibition
- Smaller OMPFC subregions where intercalcate cells reside
- Depressed size and activity in the OMPFC
Stress and the Hippocampus
Cortisol: catabolic hormone
- breaks down fat and proteins for immediate energy
- inhibits inflammatory processes
- inhibits protein syntheses within the brain and immune system
- suppresses gonadal hormones which support neural health, growth and learning
Chronic High levels of cortisol
- decreased neuroplasticity
- dendritic degeneration
- deficits of remyelination
- cell death
- inhibition of neurogenesis & neural growth
- hippocampal atrophy
High Cortisol Levels & Hippocampal Atrophy
- impaired declarative memory & spatial reasoning
- deficits in new learning
- declines in short and long-term memory
indivduals with smaller hippocampi
- adult victims of early trauma
- PTSD
- temporal lobe epilepsy
- schizophrenia
- cushing’s disease (hypercortisolism)
Inverted - U Curve of Learning and Arousal
- mRNA
- Cortisol levels: verbal memory, social memory, spatial memory, hippocampal prime burst potentials, long term potentiation
- NE levels plasticity - olfactory
- Endorphin levels - protein synthesis & memory consolidation
The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST)
- a later: evolving part of the extended amygdala
- has similar efferent and afferent connections
- grows in response to maternal behavior
- sensitive to abstract cues
- capable of long-term activation
- appears to play a central role in anticipatory arousal
Cortical Release Signs
an indication of cortical damage is the reemergence of previously inhibited reflexes
Hierarchical Brain, Relationships in PTSD
- Ompfc is smaller in PTSD
- Amygdala responsivity is correlated with symptom severity
- exaggerated amygdala response
- diminished prefrontal activation in response to fearful faces
- decreased habituation to fearful faces
Capgras syndrome
- syndrome of suspecting imposters
- disconnection between circuits of temporal lobes responsible for face recognition and the ompfc-amygdala axis (which would add the emotional reaction of seeing a loved one
- the opposite of deja vu
Pathways of integration
- Top(cortical) includes left hemisphere, dlpfc, and hippocampus
- bottom (subcortical_ includes right hemisphere, ompfc, and amygdala
as negative affect decreases, amygdala activation ____ while ompfc activation ____
decreases; increases
simultaneous top-down and left-right inhibition is responsible for
repression
transcranial stimulation (TMS)
-stimulates and inhibits neural firing to treat depression
Ompfc vs dmpfc
ompfc- emotional
dmpfc- cognitive
Prejudice and ompfc/ dmpfc
- when people make decisions based on implicit biases, ompfc and amygdala become more active
- when people make decisions incongruent with prejudice, dlpfc becomes more active
in higher states of arousal, hippocampal and amygdala networks becomes dissociated. This results in:
a disconnection between visceral-emotional (amygdala) and declarative-conscious (hippocampal) processing
Functions of narratives (6)
1) ground our experiences in a linear framework
2) remember sequences of events in problem solving
3) allow a context for movement to self-definition
4) serve as blueprints for emotion, behavior, and identity
5) provide for affect regulation when under stress
6) keep goals in mind and establish sequences of goal attainment
Why does journaling about emotional issues have a positive effect?
it increases prefrontal activation, downregulating the negative emotional activation of the amygdala
3 Levels of Language Processing
1) Reflexive social language
2) Internal dialogue
3) Language of self-reflection
Reflexive social language
- a stream of words that maintains ongoing social relatedness and communication
- function of left hemisphere
Internal dialogue
- the conversations we carry on with ourselves inside our heads
- the primary way that right hemisphere processing participates in conscious awareness
- we hear in our heads the supportive or critical voices our parents implanted early in life
Language of self-reflection
- when we reflect on RSL and internal dialogue
- in self-reflection, we learn that we are not only our social reflexes (RSL) plus the voices that haunt us (internal dialogue) but also the one that can observe, listen, and judge what we hear these voices say
- the deepest level of this is meditation
Define flashback
- intense revisualization of the trauma scene
- stereotyped and repetitive
- more detailed and perceptually based
- products of nonconscious information associated with rapid, automatic transmission
Define ordinary/autobiographical memory
- recalled in narrative form
- usually episodic recollections from an individual’s life
Define and discuss verbally accessible memory
- supports ordinary autobiographical memories
- access autobiographical knowledge base so that trauma is represented within a complete personal context
- edited and interactive
- comprises past, present and future
Define and discuss situationally accessible memory
- supports specific trauma related dreams & flashbacks
- retrieved automatically not strategically
- no interaction with autobiographical memories
What 3 aspects differentiate flashbacks from autobiographical memories
- automatic mode of retrieval
- High level of perceptual detail
- Distortion of subjective time
Define Somatic Markers
- Signals in the body that influence the process of response to stimuli
- Associations between reinforcing stimuli that induce associated physiological affective state
- Directs attention towards more advantageous options, which usually simplifies the decisions
What regions of the brain affect the hypothesis
Ventromedial Prefrontal cortex and the Amygdala
What makes it hard to plan and make decisions (damasio)?
Damage to the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex (focal damage to the frontal lobe) - region in the brain that processes human reasoning and decision making
The two circuits of sensory input that reach the amygdala are?
- thalamus: serves rapid responses during survival decisions based on a minimum of information
- loops through the cortex and hippocampus before reaching the amygdala: slower, adds cortical processing (context and inhibition) to appraise ongoing perceptions and behaviors
