Memory

Question 1

Which areas of the cerebral cortex are specialized to process specific kinds of sensory information?

Answer 1

a) Sensory cortex

b) Association cortex

Question 2

Name the function of the sensory cortex

Answer 2

process sensory info such as sight and sound

Question 3

Which kind of problem does a person with auditory agnosia for speech have?

Answer 3

hears sounds but cannot understand the meaning

Question 4

Name the function of the association cortex

Answer 4

associate information within and across modalities (links the world to the visual images as well as to semantic info)

Question 5

What kind of problem does a person with associative visual agnosia have?

Answer 5

cannot name objects but see them and copy them

Question 6

Which brian parts are involved in episodic memory?

Answer 6

Hippocampus and nearby brain structures

Question 7

What is the function of hippocampus and nearby brain structures?

Answer 7

They are needed to encode, retain or retrieve new information

Question 8

Explain the subsequent forgetting paradigm

Answer 8

Left medial prefrontal lobes are more active during initial learning of words that are later remembered (pictures activate the medial temporal lobes bilaterally, while words only activate the left medial temporal lobes)

Question 9

The hippocampus is more acctive, in the case of episodic memory, when..

Answer 9

both the word and the source were recalled, than when the word was recalled only

Question 10

What do the medial temporal lobes include?

Answer 10

includes the hippocampus, amygdala, entorhinal cortex, perihinal cortex and parahippocampal cortex

Question 11

What kind of problem does a person with aterograde amnesia have?

Answer 11

inability to form new episodic and semantic memories (explicit memories)

Question 12

Damage to the medial temporal lobes lead to..

Answer 12

difficulties with learning new information, especially forming episodic memory

Question 13

Define retrograde amnesia

Answer 13

loss of memories and events that occured before the injury

Question 14

Name the suggestion of retrograde amnesia

Answer 14

suggests that the consolidation period can last for decades, as these memories are especially vulnerable to disruption (affects old memories)

Question 15

define ribot gradient

Answer 15

pattern of memory loss

Question 16

Explain the standard consolidation theory

Answer 16

The hippocampus is only initally required for episodic memory storage and retrieval. Later, the cortex is capable of retrieving the memory without its help

Question 17

Explain the multiple memory trace theory

Answer 17

Episodic and possibly semantic memory are encoded by hippocampal and cortical neurons. Each time a memory is retrieved, the retrieval itself becomes a new episodic memory.
The memory trace can becoem a semantic memory over time, which can be stored independently of the hippocampus.
Hippocampal activity is equally large during recall of recent and distant memories

Question 18

What does the frontal cortex do?

Answer 18

determines what we store and what we do not store
PFC suppresses hippocampal activity, inhibiting storage and retrieval of “unwanted memories”
It aslo may help to bind contextual information with event memory

Question 19

Waht problem do people with source amnesia have?

Answer 19

They are confused where and when something occurred (whether something happend in TV or in one’s own past)

Question 20

What does the diencephalon include?

Answer 20

Include mammillary bodies and mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus

Question 21

Damage of the basal forbrain can result..

Answer 21

in anterograde amnesia

Question 22

Describe the Korsakoff’s disease

Answer 22

damage to the mammillary bodies and mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus - anterograde amnesia and time-graded retrograde amnesia

Question 23

define confabulation

Answer 23

making stories rather than admit memory loss

patients do not lie but belief their own stories, as they are plausible answers from old memory