Memory

Question 1

What is memory?

Answer 1

The persistence of association. The ability to store information from past experience and retrieve it.

Question 2

What is learning?

Answer 2

The process through which the CNS acquires new information. Plasticity.

Question 3

What is habituation?

Answer 3

Learning to ignore a novel (harmless) stimulus.

Question 4

What is sensitization?

Answer 4

Heightened responses to harmful stimuli.

Question 5

What are the types of declarative (made available to consciousness) qualitative categories of memory?

Answer 5

Semantic and episodic.

Question 6

What are the types of nondeclarative (not generally available to consciousness) qualitative categories of memory?

Answer 6

Priming, associative learning (conditioning), procedural.

Question 7

What are the temporal categories of memory?

Answer 7

Immediate sensory memory (a few seconds), short term working memory (seconds to minutes), Long term memory (days to years).

Question 8

What is working memory?

Answer 8

Information relevant to achieve a goal is stored for a few seconds to a few minutes. It is closely related to attention and important for language processing and problem solving. It stores both declarative and nondeclarative information. It is limited in duration and capacity.

Question 9

What is consolidation?

Answer 9

The progressive stabilization of memory that follows the initial encoding of memory through conscious or unconscious rehearsal or practice.

Question 10

What is an engram?

Answer 10

Physical embodiment of any memory in neural machinery through changes in efficacy in synaptic connections, growth or reordering of such connections.

Question 11

What encodes memory at a cellular level?

Answer 11

Changes in protein synthesis and other mechanisms of synaptic plasticity.

Question 12

What is priming?

Answer 12

The change in the processing of a stimulus in response to a previous encounter with the same or related stimulus. It is resistant to brain damage and dementia and demonstrates the importance of association in memory.

Question 13

What is semantic priming?

Answer 13

The tendency to fill in words when we have heard them in combination before. I take my coffee with cream and…’

Question 14

What are things that increase memory span?

Answer 14

Increase in association such as mnemonics, giving context to otherwise meaningless things such as chess, and motivation.

Question 15

What is classical conditioning?

Answer 15

Pairing a normal trigger with an unrelated stimulus by repeated association. The unrelated stimulus triggers the response in absence of the normal trigger. Ex. Pavlov’s dogs.

Question 16

What is operant conditioning?

Answer 16

Increasing behavioral response by associating the response with a reward. ex: training your dog to sit.

Question 17

What is amnesia?

Answer 17

The pathological process of forgetting.

Question 18

What is retrograde amnesia?

Answer 18

The pathological forgetting of events that happened prior to the onset of amnesia.

Question 19

What is anterograde amnesia?

Answer 19

The inability to form new memories.

Question 20

What parts of the brain are responsible for the formation of new declarative memories?

Answer 20

The diencephalic and medial temporal lobe structures.

Question 21

What parts of the brain form subcortical connections to the thalamus and mamillary bodies?

Answer 21

The hippocampus and amygdala.

Question 22

What is the purpose of medial temporal structures in memory?

Answer 22

Encoding and consolidating declarative memory.

Question 23

Why could H.M still learn and remember his childhood?

Answer 23

The procedural and long term memory are independent from the medial temporal structures.

Question 24

How does the level of activation of the hippocampus affect memory formation?

Answer 24

The more your hippocampus activates when learning the better you will be able to recall.

Question 25

What does the hippocampus do?

Answer 25

The hippocampus forms neural connections essentially ‘creating memory’

Question 26

What is especially important for recolection?

Answer 26

The posterior hippocampus.

Question 27

What are place cells?

Answer 27

Cells in the hippocampus that fire when the animal goes over a specific location i.e. cells that are encoded to a specific location. important for spatial memory.

Question 28

What are grid cells?

Answer 28

Cells in the entorhinal cortex that fire when in places that form a grid of hexagons. Works as your brain’s internal gps.

Question 29

What is procedural learning?

Answer 29

A form of learning that depends on the motor systems of the cerebellum and the basal ganglia.

Question 30

Where is declarative long term memory stored?

Answer 30

In the cerebral cortex.

Question 31

Where is semantic memory stored?

Answer 31

Areas of the cortex that activate when encoding the object.

Question 32

Where is priming stored?

Answer 32

The neocortex

Question 33

Where is procedural (skills and habits) stored?

Answer 33

The striatum.

Question 34

Where is emotional associative memory stored?

Answer 34

Amygdala.

Question 35

Where is skeletal musculature associative memory stored?

Answer 35

cerebellum.

Question 36

Where is sensitization and habituation stored?

Answer 36

The reflex pathways.