Memory Flashcards
Which areas of the cerebral cortex are specialized to process specific kinds of sensory information?
a) Sensory cortex
b) Association cortex
Name the function of the sensory cortex
process sensory info such as sight and sound
Which kind of problem does a person with auditory agnosia for speech have?
hears sounds but cannot understand the meaning
Name the function of the association cortex
associate information within and across modalities (links the world to the visual images as well as to semantic info)
What kind of problem does a person with associative visual agnosia have?
cannot name objects but see them and copy them
Which brian parts are involved in episodic memory?
Hippocampus and nearby brain structures
What is the function of hippocampus and nearby brain structures?
They are needed to encode, retain or retrieve new information
Explain the subsequent forgetting paradigm
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)
The hippocampus is more acctive, in the case of episodic memory, when..
both the word and the source were recalled, than when the word was recalled only
What do the medial temporal lobes include?
includes the hippocampus, amygdala, entorhinal cortex, perihinal cortex and parahippocampal cortex
What kind of problem does a person with aterograde amnesia have?
inability to form new episodic and semantic memories (explicit memories)
Damage to the medial temporal lobes lead to..
difficulties with learning new information, especially forming episodic memory
Define retrograde amnesia
loss of memories and events that occured before the injury
Name the suggestion of retrograde amnesia
suggests that the consolidation period can last for decades, as these memories are especially vulnerable to disruption (affects old memories)
define ribot gradient
pattern of memory loss
Explain the standard consolidation theory
The hippocampus is only initally required for episodic memory storage and retrieval. Later, the cortex is capable of retrieving the memory without its help
Explain the multiple memory trace theory
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
What does the frontal cortex do?
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
Waht problem do people with source amnesia have?
They are confused where and when something occurred (whether something happend in TV or in one’s own past)
What does the diencephalon include?
Include mammillary bodies and mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus
Damage of the basal forbrain can result..
in anterograde amnesia
Describe the Korsakoff’s disease
damage to the mammillary bodies and mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus - anterograde amnesia and time-graded retrograde amnesia
define confabulation
making stories rather than admit memory loss
patients do not lie but belief their own stories, as they are plausible answers from old memory
