Memory Flashcards
Define memory
The ability to recall or recognise previous experience
What is a memory trace?
A mental representation of a previous experience.
What are the three types of long-term memory?
Explicit (conscious)
Implicit (unconscious)
Emotional (conscious & unconscious)
Describe explicit memory.
Subjects can demonstrate knowledge, such as a skill, conditioned response, or recalling events on prompting, but cannot explicitly retrieve the information.
Describe implicit memory.
Subjects can retrieve an item and indicate that they know that the retrieved item is the correct item.
What does explicit memory consists of?
Episodic (personal, autobiographical)
Semantic (facts, knowledge)
What does implicit memory consist of?
Skills
Habits
Priming
Conditioning
What does emotional memory consist of?
Attraction
Avoidance
Fear
What are the two categories of memory?
Declarative memory (explicit) Procedural memory (implicit)
What is declarative memory?
Ability to recount facts, to detail the time, place and circumstances of an event.
Often lost in amnesia.
What is procedural memory?
Ability to recall a movement sequences or how to perform some act or behaviour.
How does the brain encode implicit information?
Encoded in a “bottom-up” or data-driven manner
Information is encoded in the same way it was perceived.
Individual has a passive role in learning
How does the brain encode explicit information?
Encoded in a “top-down” or conceptually-driven manner
Subject reorganises the information before it is encoded
Person has an active role in learning
Very easily biased
How does the brain process ST memories?
In the frontal lobes
Usually takes a few minutes in duration
How does the brain process LT memories?
In the temporal lobes
Indefinite duration
What are the findings of the Martin et al. (1995) study?
Recall of colours activated a region in the ventral temporal lobe.
Recall of action words activated a region in the middle temporal lobe.
Indicates that information from different sensory modalities is processed and stored in different neural areas.
What does autobiographical memory contain?
This episodic memory not only stores a record of events that took place (episodes), but also a record of our own presence and role in the event.
What is a symptom of episodic amnesia?
Inability to recall any personally experienced events.
What parts of the brain are associated with losing personal memories?
Frontal lobes - may allow us to mentally travel through our past
Could be due to injury or reduced blood flow to frontal lobes.
What prime structures of the brain are involved in neural circuit for explicit memory?
Medial temporal region - hippocampus - amygdala - entorhinal cortex - parahippocampal cortex - perirhinal cortex Frontal cortex
What is the role of the hippocampus in explicit memory?
Visuospatial memory
- using visual information to identify an object’s location in space
What is the monkey case study?
During tasks in which monkeys must keep information in short-term memory over a delay, certain cells in the frontal cortex will fire throughout the delay.
Indicates the role of the frontal lobes in STM of explicit information.
What prime structures of the brain are involves in the neural circuit for implicit memory?
Basal ganglia
Ventral thalamus
Substantia nigra
Premotor cortex
What is Mishkin’s theory about the unconscious nature of implicit memory?
Believes that implicit memories are unconscious because the connections between the basal ganglia and cortex are unidirectional. For memories to be conscious, there must be feedback to the cortex.
