PS120 Neuropsychology & Psychopathology Term 2 Flashcards
Declarative memory
A form of memory that involves the (conscious) recollection of experiences and facts. These recollections can be communicated to someone else either verbally or by some other means (they can be declared)
The term explicit memory is often used as a synonym for declarative memory involves the “conscious recollection of previous experiences”
Non-declarative memory
A form of memory that does not involve conscious recollection and that cannot be described or expressed verbally (cannot be declared). The existence of the memory is demonstrated through performance (i.e by doing something)
The term implicit memory is used as a synonym for declarative memory
Lane changing
Lane changing is a commonly executed maneouvre
The angle-time graph shows that steering wheel movement involves two ‘phases’: a movement to the right and back to the centre (phase 1) followed by a movement to the left and back to the centre again (phase 2).
Most people are unaware that lane-changing involves a two-phase (biphasic) movement of the steering wheel, though they are quite capable of executing the maneouvre
When people are asked what kind of steering wheel movement is required they say only the first phase is needed. In a simulator participants were required to execute a lane change maneouvre without being able to obtain visual feedback about the execution. The finding was that when participants could not see the road (they were driving blind when they entered the ‘tunnel’), they did not execute both phases of the maneouvre.
Motor skills being non-declarative
This an example of the memory underlying motor skill being non-declaritive, which is to say that a person can demonstrate their knowledge through doing but is not able to consciously able to retrieve information from memory concerning what exactly it is that they actually do.
What do the findings of a non-visual lane change show?
These findings show that people can execute the first phase of the maeouvre but do not produce the second phase unless they can see where they are going. Thus, initiation of the second phase required feedback from execution of the first phase.
Anterograde amnesia
Anterograde amnesia - a serious impairment of the ability to form memories of things that occurred after the brain was damaged it is not a loss of existing memory, it is a loss of an ability to form memories. They can hold some things in their mind for a few seconds but usually for no more than a minute or so.
Henry Molaison
The most famous case study: Henry Molaison was studied for fifty years until his death in 2008. Received surgery for his severe epilepsy in 1953 involved removing the medial parts of the temporal lobe (including the hippocampus) on both sides of the brain. The hippocampus is a folded ‘terminal’ part of the cerebral cortex that lies close to the midbrain.
HM’s surgery successfully dealt with epilepsy and had little or no detectable effect on his personality, perceptual ability or intelligence. He was unable to form new memories of events in his life and new facts. This inability to remember was found to be largely confined memory as he was able to develop skill in a variety of motor taks and to retain what he had learned for many years.
HM drawing a star within a star experiment - HM was able to improve performance of the mirror tracing task and retain the improvement over an extended period, though he had no recollection on either day two or three of ever having performed the task before.
What type of memory is involved in Pavlovian learning?
Non-declarative - the memories formed in non-associative and Pavlovian learning are not ‘retrieved’ from anywhere
Why is the term procedural memory problematic?
Used inconsistently: sometimes to mean non-declarative memory generally, sometimes only memory that relates to behaviours involving procedures
Confusing when used to refer to memory underlying behaviours that do not involve these procedures
Confusing because a memory of a procedure is not a procedural memory: if you can declare knowledge of a procedure, it’s not a procedural memory
Eye-blink conditioning experiment
Every once in a while a tone sounds and then a puff of air is blown into your eye (in a delay procedure)
CR acquisition is slow
Is this all a person learns? No people, may also learn that a tone sounded before every puff.
How do we know? Ask them and they will tell you (a declarative memory was formed)
These data came from an experiment in which people were watching a movie during the procedure
Most of them had a declarative memory of the procedure, but a few did not all
They all produced CRs: a declarative memory is NOT involved in the production of CRs
In eye-blink conditioning the non-declarative memory is the change in circuitry (CS -> CR circuit)
May also acquire the declarative memory that the puff of air was preceded by a tone
If there is no declarative memory, CRs are still acquired
Declarative memory plays no role in generating the CR (also non-declarative memory plays no role in the declaration that the tone preceded the air-puff)
True or false a declarative memory of the CS-US relationship is also acquired during simulatenous and backwards conditioning procedures
True - A declarative memory of the CS-US relationship is also acquired when people experience simultaneous and backwards conditioning procedures
But no CRs are acquired: declarative knowledge is acquired, but not non-declarative knowledge
Thus learning takes place in simultaneous and backward conditioning, but it is not Pavlovian learning
Retrograde amnesia
Loss of memory about life events experienced prior to the damage and factual information acquired prior to the damage
