Learning and Memory: Memory Systems

Question 1

Patient HM (Henry Molaison)

Answer 1

sever epilepsy, surgical lesions, identified damaged areas where seizures started and removed it (the medial temporal lobe including amygdala and hippocampus), lost all ability to make new memories

Question 2

Memory type: declarative

Answer 2

things we can talk about, broken up into episodic (events) and semantic (facts)

Question 3

Memory type: non-declarative

Answer 3

things that are hard to talk about, broken up into priming (facilitated processing of a stimulus the second time we see it), procedural (skills), and classical conditioning (learned association between two stimuli, broken into emotional and skeletal)

Question 4

Memory type: working memory

Answer 4

temporary storage of information, limited capacity, require continuous rehersal

Question 5

HM and motor skills

Answer 5

could learn new motor skills (procedural memories), mirror drawing task (number of errors decrease)

Question 6

HM and timing

Answer 6

can remember some information but cannot remember a lot (relied on working memory) whereas controls could remember more over time by developing strategies for remembering

Question 7

HM and priming

Answer 7

could do priming tasks, show subject series of words, take a break, ask subject to fill in chart and they subconsciously fill in the blanks with the words from the list

Question 8

HM and classical conditioning

Answer 8

could be classically conditioned

Question 9

Areas of the brain: declarative

Answer 9

medial temporal lobe (MTL), diencephalon (thalamus and hypothalamus), throughout cortex

Question 10

Areas of the brain: non-declarative

Answer 10

priming: neocortex (just regions of cortex with 6 layers), procedural: striatum (putamen and caudate), emotional classical conditioning: amygdala, skeletal classical conditioning: cerebellum

Question 11

Areas of the brain: working memory

Answer 11

prefrontal cortex

Question 12

amnesia

Answer 12

retrograde: things in the past, anterograde: things in the future, HM helped identify differences between recent past and past memories

Question 13

how does memory change over time?

Answer 13

consolidation: storing new memories into long term memory, requires protein synthesis, novel memories are more likely to be consolidated

Question 14

neural basis of memories

Answer 14

engram: physical representation of memories

Question 15

studying declarative memories

Answer 15

spatial memory: mental representation of the environment and locations in it

place cell: a neuron in the hippocampus that fires APs only when is in a certain region of space (not topographically arranged)

spatial memory test: Morris water maze

Question 16

overview of types of memories

Answer 16