Memory and Changing Brain; Implicit Memory and Skill Learning; Consolidation and Forgetting Flashcards
What are the problems that develop in Alzheimer’s disease?
Problems with central executive, no recency effect, RA with temporal gradient, AA, issues with encoding, lost knowledge about functional relations of objects, source monitoring errors
What are the problems that develop in Parkinson’s disease?
Problems with central executive, episodic buffer, visuospatial sketchpad, changing strategies, RA with temporal gradient, temporal order of events, retrieval
What are the problems that develop in Huntington’s disease?
Problems with central executive, RA without temporal gradient, retrieval, free recall, non-verbal info
What are the problems that develop in Multiple Sclerosis?
Problems with STM and retrieval
What is Ribot’s gradient?
Older memories are less affected by RA bc they are more consolidated, newer memories are forgetten more
What brain areas are damaged in AA?
Medial temporal lobes (hippocampus), diencephalon (thalamus, hypothalamus, mammilary bodies)
What brain areas are damaged in TGA?
Temporal lobes, hippocampus, thalamus
What is a subsequent memory paradigm?
- Study word list under fMRI
- Surprise recall
Differnt activation during study for words that will be remembered and forgotten
Remembered words activate more left hippocamus, PFC and medial temporal lobe
What are the 2 theories of consolidation and what to the say?
Standard consolidation theory — fresh memories are hippocampus dependent; as they consolidate, connetions in the cortex strengthen and hippocampus gets disengaged
Multiple-trace theory — hippocampus always stays involved in retrieval of memories
What areas in the medial temporal lobe are important for memory and what are their functions?
Hippocampus -> episodic memory
Parahippocampal cortex -> adds context to episodic knowledge, distinguishes false memories from real ones AND semantic knowledge
Perirhinal cortex -> semantic knowledge
Enthorhinal cortex
What is the role of frontal cortex in memory?
Metamemory -> decides which memories to store, adds contextial info to memories, can suppress hippocampal activity, responsible for source monitoring errors (confabulation)
What is the role of basal ganglia in memory?
Produce ACH which is important for learning
What are the brain areas in diencephalon and what are their functions?
Thalamus -> sensory relay
Hypothalamus -> regulating activity of involuntary functions
Mamillary bodies -> uncleat but smth with memory
What did Maguire et al. (2006) find about the hippocampus of the taxi drivers?
Taxi drivers had more gray matter in posterior hippocampus (responsible for retrieval) and less gray matter in anterior hippocampus (encoding novel stimuli) compared to bus drivers
Taxi drivers were better on spatial and landmark tests but worse on acquiring new visuospatial info than bus drivers
Why did Maguire et al. (2006) compare taxi drivers to bus brivers?
They wanted to investigate the effects of spatial navigation of hippocampus, while controlling for every other possible confound. Bus drivers were very similar to taxi drivers as both spend a lot of time driving and experience similar amounts of stress but bus drivers follow a preset route while taxi drivers don’t. This makes it possible to isolate the effects of spatial navigation
What type of practice is best for long-term retention?
Spaced, variable and gradual
What are the stages of skill learning?
- Cognitive stage — following instructions
- Associative stage — no instructions, not automatic
- Automonus stage — motor program (can maintain a conversation)
What is the finding in rotary pursuit task in twins?
Identical twins become more similar with training while fraternal twins become more dissimilar
Practice decreases the effects of prior experience while increasing the effect of genes
What is transfer specificity?
Learned skill can be applied only for specific situations
Related to transfer-appropriate processing
What does identical elements theory say about skills?
Successful skill transfer depends on the number of elements that are identical btw 2 situations
What does learning set formation mean?
Learning to learn
Increases learning efficiency for similar skills to what you already know
What brain areas are involved in skill learning and how?
Basal ganglia link sensory events to performance (initiating/maintaining movements and motor programs) and is involved in cognitive skill performance
Cerebral cortex controls complex action sequences (cortical expansion)
Cerebellum is important for timing of movements
