Memory Flashcards
What is the importance of memory?
Important for survival and new learning
Memory plays a critical role in how we learn and adapt to our environment.
What are the two main types of long-term memory?
Explicit memory and Implicit memory
Explicit memory is conscious and long-term, while implicit memory is unconscious and also long-term.
What is explicit memory?
Declarative/conscious and long-term
Explicit memory can be further divided into episodic, semantic, and prospective memory.
What is episodic memory?
Autobiographical memory
Example: The night you graduated from college.
What is semantic memory?
Factual knowledge
Example: George Washington was the first president of the US.
What is prospective memory?
Delayed intentions
Example: Pick up milk after work today.
What is implicit memory?
Nondeclarative/unconscious and long-term
Implicit memory includes skills, priming, conditioning, and emotional responses.
Implicit: skills (procedural knowledge)
Riding a bike or playing checkers
Implicit: priming
Responding faster to ‘butter’ after hearing ‘bread’.
Implicit: conditioning
Associating the sound of a fire siren with an emergency.
What are the stages of memory?
Encoding, Consolidation, Storage, Retrieval
Each stage plays a critical role in how memories are formed and recalled.
Encoding
•Early processing of material to be learned
•Depth and organization of material (quality of encoding) determines how well it’s stored
•Largely dependent on dlPFC
.
Consolidation
•Process by which recently encoded info is transferred to permanent storage
•Recent events are more vulnerable to forgetting because consolidation is not complete
•Once it is consolidated, less dependent on hippocampus, and more on cortical structures
Storage
•Information is held in memory for future use
•Long term store permanent unless interrupted by pathology
Retrieval
•Pulling information from storage to use it
•PFC and hippocampus involved in retrieval
•NOTE: REPEATED RETRIEVAL FROM LONG-TERM STORE STRENGTHENS MEMORIES!
Hippocampus
•Critical for encoding and consolidation of memory
Amygdala
•Encoding emotional memories
•Consolidation
Basal ganglia
•Learning motor skills
•Implicit memory
Cerebellum
•Procedural memory
Frontal lobe
•Prospective memory
•Important for retrieval/executive control
Temporal lobe
•Autobiographical memory
•Semantic knowledge
Anterograde amnesia
•difficulty remembering anything from the onset of the problem on any new memories after the TBI for example
Retrograde amnesia
•difficulty remembering things before the onset of the problem, or after the TBI for example
Posttraumatic amnesia
loss of memory for events immediately before or following a trauma
How is memory assessed (examples)?
•List learning, digit span, story retell
•Immediate, delayed, recognition, forced choice
•For list learning with multiple trials, gives info on:
•initial recall: span or attention mechanisms
•learning curve: amount of information learned
•Primacy (do you tend to remember stuff at beginning) and recency (do you tend to remember stuff at end, most recent) effects
•learning strategies: organization, association, rehearsal, visualization, etc.
•Visual memory tasks
•Attempt to take language out of it
•Often abstract designs/figures
•Prospective memory tasks
•When x happens later in the assessment, I want you to do y
How is memory treated?
•Restorative v. compensatory rehabilitation
•Internal v. external strategies
•Metacognitive (thinking about thinking) training needs to happen alongside memory treatment in many patients
Implicit: emotional
Physical attraction or fear
