Lecture 9 Memory Flashcards
What did Theodore Ribolt call to attention?
He proposed Ribot’s law which described the gradient of memory loss in dementia. This being that the most recent memories were the first to be lost and earlier memories were kept
What did Sergei Korsakoff observe and what can be concluded from his observations?
described a series of patients, mostly alcoholics, with a neuropsychiatric syndrome prominently involving memory loss
Korsakoff’s syndrome: a memory deficiency caused by a lack thiamine (seen in chronic alcoholism)
-brain damage occurs in mammillary bodies and dorsomedial thalamus
- mammillary bodies are darkened and shrunken as a result of bleeding and cell death
Arnold Pick’s observations about memory loss
Subject had a shrunken/ shriveled frontal lobe (picks disease) which lead to difficulties accessing memory. caused him to propose there is memory material in the frontal lobe
Vladimir Bekhterev’s observations with memory
Reported that patient with amnesia had a “softened” temporal lobe.
Who was William Scoville?
Guy who operated on patient HM and removed his rostral medial temporal lobe
What did Brenda Milner do?
Studied patient HM. and his dimensions of memory ie. his abilities to form short term, long term memories
identified the role of the hippocampus in the consolidation, but not storage, of declarative memories
What were the short term tasks patient HM was instructed to do for short term memory?
Digit span:
repeating digits that have been previously shown to him one by one
block-tapping memory-span test: show that HMs amnesia was global and not limited to one sensory modality
Patient HM long term memory tasks
Mirror reverse tracing task
Mirror reverse reading
Dot’s and lines of an incomplete figure
What are the two forms of long term memory?
Declarative:
thing you know that you can tell others
Non-declarative:
things you can show by doing
Two types of Declarative memory and associated brain region.
Episodic: Personal memories (Right frontal and temporal cortex)
Semantic: Facts and details (Lateral temporal and frontal cortex)
What brain section is responsible for spatial location learning
hippocampus
It contains place cells
that become active when
in, or moving toward, a
particular location
Three types of Non-declarative memory
Skill learning:
Driving
Priming:
Word use
Conditioning: Classical/operant
What is example of conceptual vs perceptual priming?
Conceptual:
Things related to a forest:
Think of tree
Perceptual:
Complete word that starts with TR
think of tree
Where is episodic and semantic memory stored
Storage in cortex
Where is Skill learning stored
Basal ganglia, motor cortex, cerebellum
