Memory-Berry

Question 1

What are the basic categories of memory?

Answer 1

Declarative: Episodic & Semantic

Nondeclarative

Question 2

T/F Memories are not subject to alterations.

Answer 2

False. They are! Every time you bring up a memory you make it subject to alterations.

Question 3

Describe episodic & semantic memory. Which of these is NOT affected by amnesia?

Answer 3

Episodic–autobiographical
semantic–knowledge or facts about the world.
**these are both declarative memory.
**semantic memory not usu affected by amnesia.

Question 4

What is non-declarative memory?

Answer 4

this is the type of memory that tells you to turn right in a store or how to get home
autopilot so you don’t have to think all the time!

Question 5

What are the 4 categories of non-declarative memory?

Answer 5

skills & habits
priming
conditioning
nonassociative

Question 6

What is working memory?

Answer 6

this is considered executive function
it lasts for like 30 seconds
you can only handle 4 +/- 1 things

Question 7

What are the peaks that you see in autobiographical memories?

Answer 7

reminiscence bump in adolescence & early adulthood: 16-25 yo b/c experiencing so many new things
another peak of recent memory (last couple years)
**but there is childhood amnesia

Question 8

What did the incredible shrinking machine tell us about childhood amnesia?

Answer 8

it showed that kids could only recall 1 year the later the objects that they could name.
Could remember the shrinking horse, but not the shrinking xylophone.
**shows that memory seems to require sufficient language development & neural wiring.

Question 9

Which clinical populations seemed to have difficulty with autobiographical memory with lack of event details & reported repeated events?

Answer 9

**those with depression, schizophrenia, PTSD, Anxiety Disorders

Question 10

If the hippocampus is the memory center, then what is the amygdala?

Answer 10

amygdala: highly emotional memory center

Question 11

What was the deal with the woman with bilateral amygdala damage?

Answer 11

she had semantic knowledge of fear but had no conditioned fear responses.
had no emotional memories in her autobiographical memories.

Question 12

What are flashbulb memories?

Answer 12

personal memories of surprising events
maybe of public or personal tragedies
**have a high level of confidence about these memories, but not a high level of accuracy

Question 13

How does the accuracy & confidence level of flashbulb memories compare to everyday memories?

Answer 13

they have similar accuracy

but people have much higher confidence level of their flashbulb memories.

Question 14

Where is the center of the brain that causes a person to have confidence in a memory?

Answer 14

• *the IPL: inferior parietal lobe
• *if this area is severely damaged, people will remember an event, but not whether it happened to them or in a move or something.

Question 15

T/F we use similar parts of our brain to recall past events as we do to predict & construct future events.

Answer 15

True.

Question 16

What happened to HM who had bilateral excision of the medial temporal lobes?

Answer 16

he had no new episodic memories
normal distant long term memories
he had normal semantic, procedural, & priming
had anterograde amnesia, and 1 year’s worth of retrograde amnesia.

Question 17

What was HM’s learning curve like after the bad surgery?

Answer 17

he would never remember that he had played a difficult game, but he would still get better at it each time.

Question 18

T/F Although those with amnesia have difficulty remembering past events, they have not trouble constructing/predicting possible future events.

Answer 18

False. They struggle with this too. Same area of the brain.

Question 19

What happens in Wernicke Korsakoff’s Syndrome?

Answer 19

damage to mammillary bodies
sometimes from chronic alcohol abuse (thiamine deficiency)
**affects memory

Question 20

What can obstructive sleep apnea damage?

Answer 20

could damage the mammillary bodies

Question 21

What type of memory loss is observed in patients with Alzheimer’s disease?

Answer 21

mainly anterograde at first

as the disease progresses–>get some retrograde amnesia too!

Question 22

What is herpes encephalitis?

Answer 22

caused by herpes simplex virus
causes acute encephalitis & can be fatal
causes intense hemorrhagic necrosis of the affected tissue, especially in the medial temporal lobe
**can get serious neurological deficits–including amnesia & global dementia

Question 23

Cortical association areas–>_____ areas (near the temporal lobe)–>hippocampus–>thalamus & hypothalamus via the fornix. Hippocampus also communicates back to the cortical association areas.

Answer 23

parahippocampal & rhinal cortical areas

Question 24

Which area of the brain is important for spatial processing?

Answer 24

the medial temporal lobe, including the hippocampus & the enterorhinal complex

Question 25

There are 3 different important cell types for spatial processing. What are they?

Answer 25

hippocampus (place cell)
subiculum (direction cell)
enterorhinal (grid cell)

Question 26

What did studies show about the London taxi drivers & their hippocampus?

Answer 26

the longer they were drivers–>their posterior hippocampus enlarged.
their anterior hippocampus also shrank.

Question 27

How is semantic memory organized? Are memories stored in the hippocampus?

Answer 27

Memories are NOT stored in the hippocampus.–>this just directs to where the memories are stored!
There are 2 theories of memory organization:
Distributed only view-gating architecture
Distributed plus hub view–convergent architecture w/ a task-independent representation

Question 28

What does the medial temporal lobe do to store a comprehensive memory for a whole event?

Answer 28

Receives processed information cortical regions
Returns projections to these same cortical regions
Controls reorganization in the cortex
Binds information together from the multiple, geographically separate cortical regions

Question 29

T/F Declarative memory is implicit memory.

Answer 29

FALSE
Declarative Memory-explicit
Nondeclarative Memory-implicit

Question 30

T/F Implicit memories are easier to form & easier to forget.

Answer 30

FALSE
harder to form
but harder to forget

Question 31

What are the hardest reward seeking behaviors to extinguish in conditioning?

Answer 31

the ones with variable ratio intermittent rewards.

like the slot machines

Question 32

Which areas does the MMSE test? What is considered a concerning score?

Answer 32

orientation, registration, attention and calculation, recall, and language.
The maximum score is 30.
A score of 23 or lower is indicative of cognitive impairment.

Question 33

Which questions/tasks are involved in the Mini-Cog?

Answer 33

a 3 item recall test

a clock drawing test