Lecture 10- Memory disorders

Question 1

What are the two causes of amnesia?

Answer 1

Organic and psychogenic

Question 2

What is organic cause of amnesia?

Answer 2

Acute damage to the brain and degenerative disease

Question 3

What is psychogenic cause of amnesia?

Answer 3

Psychological

Question 4

What are the forms of amnesia?

Answer 4

Retrograde and anterograde

Question 5

What are the main features of the amnesic syndrome?

Answer 5

Pronounced anterograde amnesia (inability to encode and retrieve memories for events after)
Variable retrograde amnesia (inability to retrieve memories acquired before)
Intact STM
Preserved genetic intelligence
Skills are uneffected
Some residual learning capacity

Question 6

What parts of the brain are important for memory?

Answer 6

Amygdala
Basal ganglia
Cerebellum
Frontal lobe
Occipital lobe

Question 7

What is the amygdala implicated in?

Answer 7

Emotional content for episodic memories

Question 8

What is the basal ganglia implicated in?

Answer 8

Important for learning motor skills

Question 9

What is the cerebellum implicated in?

Answer 9

Memory for automatised skills

Question 10

What is the frontal lobe implicated in?

Answer 10

Working memory (central executive), source monitoring and prospective memory

Question 11

What is the occipital lobe implicated in?

Answer 11

Visul perspectiv representation memory

Question 12

What happened to HM?

Answer 12

Bilateral removal of the medial temporal lobe and 2/3 of the hippocampus
Personality is unchanged and IQ is up
Unable to encode and retrieve new episodic memories and developed severe anterograde amnesia

Question 13

What was normal with HM?

Answer 13

STM and learning of new procedural memories

Question 14

Who looked at HM?

Answer 14

Squire

Question 15

What did Squire find?

Answer 15

HM’s impairment was severe as the bilateral damage included parahippocampal and was not restricted to the hippocampus
HM had deficits in declarative memory

Question 16

Who looked at the brain structures in amnesia?

Answer 16

Squire

Question 17

What did Squire find?

Answer 17

Anterior hippocampus and hippocampal gyrus are concerned with the retention of current experience
Medial temporal- formation of new memories

Question 18

What is Korsakoff’s syndrome?

Answer 18

Caused by a thiamine deficiency due to chronic alcoholism. Damage to the diencephalon. Patients appear drunk, uncoordinated and confused

Question 19

What is amnesia in Korsakoff’s syndrome?

Answer 19

STM is normal
Encoding and retrieval of new episodic LTM is impaired
Retrograde amnesia stretches back years
Temporal gradient of retrograde amnesia

Question 20

What is viral encephalitis caused by?

Answer 20

Herpes virus crossing blood-brain barrier

Question 21

What are the characteristics of viral encephalitis?

Answer 21

Onset of acute fever, headache and nausea

Question 22

What damage can viral encephalitis have?

Answer 22

Extensive bilateral temporal lobe damage

Question 23

What is the amnesia in viral encephalitis?

Answer 23

Similar to Korsakoff
Deficits of spatial and semantic memory
Flatter temporal gradient

Question 24

How common is amnesia in Alzheimer’s disease?

Answer 24

62%

Question 25

How common is amnesia in vascular?

Answer 25

17%

Question 26

What are the characteristics of amnesia due to dementia?

Answer 26

Progressive neural disease General degeneration of the brain (atrophy due to the growth of neural plaque and tangles)

Question 27

Who looked at amnesia due to dementia?

Answer 27

Morris and Kopelman

Question 28

What did Morris and Kopelman find?

Answer 28

Patterns of impairments involve information processing deficits superimposed upon an amnesic syndrome

Question 29

What is transient global amnesia?

Answer 29

Sudden onset of anterograde amnesia and retrograde amnesia

Question 30

What are the characteristics of transient global amnesia?

Answer 30

No loss of personal identity Anxiety Agitated Repetitive questioning Rare Recognising family members

Question 31

Who does transient global amnesia effect the most?

Answer 31

Over 50s and more often men

Question 32

What are the triggers of transient global amnesia?

Answer 32

Emotional upset and vigorious exercise

Question 33

What evidence does amnesia provide with STM and LTM?

Answer 33

Dissociation between STM and LTM and the explicit and implicit

Question 34

What memory does amnesia usually effect?

Answer 34

Episodic and semantic

Question 35

What does amnesia not effect?

Answer 35

Normal priming effects Motor skills Learning of procedural skills

Question 36

What are the theories of anterograde amnesia?

Answer 36

Faulty encoding Accelerating forgetting Faulty retrieval Faulty encoding and storage of contextual information

Question 37

Who looked at amnesia and encoding?

Answer 37

Cermak

Question 38

What did Cermak find?

Answer 38

Amnesic deficits are due to a lack of deep encoding

Question 39

Who looked at accelerating forgetting?

Answer 39

Huppert and Piercy

Question 40

What did Huppert and Piercy find?

Answer 40

Patients with hippocampal lesions forget faster than controls even after material has been adequately learned

Question 41

Who looked at retrieval deficits?

Answer 41

Kritchevsky

Question 42

What did Kritchevsky find?

Answer 42

Transient amnesia shows tat retrieval deficits can cause amnesia and once amnesia resolves memories that were unavailable can be retrieved normally

Question 43

Who looked at why retrieval deficit occur?

Answer 43

Warrington and Weiskrantz

Question 44

What did Warrington and Weiskrantz find?

Answer 44

Retrieval deficit is due to response competition. Partial information helps overcome competition

Question 45

Is recognition or recall impaired in retrieval deficits?

Answer 45

Recall

Question 46

What does contextual information allow?

Answer 46

Distinguishing between similar memories

Question 47

Who did the test of the contextual deficit theory ?

Answer 47

Huppert and Piercy

Question 48

What did Huppert and Piercy do?

Answer 48

Two groups: amnesic (Korsakoff patients) and the control Presented a set of pictures on day 1 and a set of pictures of day 2 Some were presented on both days Recognition test after the day 2 pictures Both groups asked to do 2 tasks: asked if they have ever seem recognition and then day 2 recognition if the pictures had been seen only on day 2

Question 49

What are the problems of the contextual deficit theory?

Answer 49

Semantic memories can be impaired Definition of context is vague Context processing deficit s vary substantially across patient groups (Squire)

Question 50

What is Ribot's law of retrograde amnesia?

Answer 50

Recent memories are more likely to be lost

Question 51

What is temporal gradient due to?

Answer 51

Slow scale consolidation processes as earlier memories have had longer to be consolidated

Question 52

Who did the standard consolidation theory?

Answer 52

Dudai

Question 53

What is the standard consolidation theory?

Answer 53

Episodic memories are initially encoded and stored in the hippocampus and retrieval of the memories require reactivating of the hippocampus Overtime the hippocampal memory trace becomes less important and the cortex can retrieve the memory without the hippocampus Older memories are spared in retrograde amnesia

Question 54

What are the types of psychogenic amnesia?

Answer 54

Fugue states and dissociative amnesia

Question 55

What are the fugue state triggers?

Answer 55

Severe stress, depressed mood, history of transient organic amnesia (Kihlstrom and Schacter)

Question 56

How long does psychogenic amnesia last?

Answer 56

A few hours or days

Question 57

What happens after recovery from fugue states?

Answer 57

All the memories are lost

Question 58

What does dissociative types of psychogenic amnesia?

Answer 58

Refers to loss of memory for specific events due to trauma with no anterograde amnesia

Question 59

What is amnesic syndrome associated with (Baddeley)?

Answer 59

Amnesic syndrome is associated with damage to the temporal lobe, hippocampus or mamillary bodies