Memory 2 Flashcards
What is Procedural memory?
Automatic behavior/actions
* Patterns of movements encoded in the brain
* Basal Ganglia – motor sequence; Prefrontal cortex - organization
* More immune to forgetting compared to other types of memory
What are habits?
- Initially rely on explicit memory; with training and or exposure
then rely on implicit memory - Motor action sequences (e.g., remember your phone’s
password by just moving your fingers over the pad) - Repetitive thoughts and emotions [Obsessive Compulsive
Disorder (OCD)] - Basis of some addictions
How can we break a habit?
To break habit, need to inhibit prefrontal cortex, region that monitors habit
Have a new behavior and a new reward
An example of Priming: word completion task.
Study these words
MOTEL
GUEST
LIST
Then fill in this
MOT__
L__T
Participants are likely to use prior words to complete the fragments without knowing it
What happens when no amygdala response?
Don’t feel fear as much / at all.
What is Spreading activation in the semantic network?
- Automatic activation spreads from an activated concept to other interconnected aspects
- Thinking about a canary will trigger activation in related bird concepts
- Spreading activation to features
- Semantic priming
- Related ideas triggered at retreival
- Trains of thought that might seem nonsensical
Explain HM and the role of the hippocampus in episodic memory?
- Intact short-term memory
- Can remember a short list of word for 30
seconds - Intact procedural memory
- Could learn new skill-based tasks
- Intact semantic memory
- Could recall major historic events of childhood
- Profound episodic memory loss
- He couldn’t learn new information and
recalled his past in sparse detail
What is Anterograde amnesia?
This is the inability to form new episodic memories
What is Retrograde amnesia?
The loss of memories from before the onset of amnesia
- Temporally graded such that remote memories are less affected
than recent memories
What is Dissociative amnesia
a disorder characterized by retrospectively reported memory gaps. These gaps involve an inability to recall personal information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature.
- Leads to shifts in lifestyle such as moving to a new place, assuming a new identity
- Usually a response to psychological or physical trauma
- Not from brain injury or malingering
How are dreams and memory connected?
Patients with focal bilateral hippocampal damage and amnesia and healthy controls
- Woken up at various points during the night and asked if they dreamt and to describe the dreams
- People with hippocampal damage reported fewer dreams and the dreams
they had were much less detailed
What is Dementia?
Progressive cognitive and functional impairments due to neuronal death
Where does neurodegeneration start?
Neurodegeneration begins in the left anterior temporal lobe
(Zone for semantic concept representations)
What is Semantic dementia?
Deficits recognizing faces of friends, words, and uses of objects
How does aging effect how adults see things?
Older adults will have trouble focusing
on one picture and ignore all other
pictures on a busy wall
