quiz 11 Flashcards
what are the stages of memory
1) encoding
- acquisition (perception)
- consolidation (moving perceived info to memory)
2) storage: where memory is kept
3) retrieval: reproducing info
where is brain damage in amnesia
in the hippocampus
how did patient H.M. contribute to amnesia research
had epilepsy, doctors removed hippocampus to help epilepsy, but ended up giving him amnesia
-this is how we know what we know about amnesia
what is Korsakoff’s amnesia
- causes severe anterograde amnesia
- damage to the mammillary bodies associated with chronic alcoholism
- confabulation (making things up) is a common system
what are the two types of amnesia
anterograde and retrograde
what is anterograde amnesia
- inability to learn new explicit info after brain injury
- can’t form new long-term declarative memories
- able to recall some old memories, but usually accompanied by some retrograde amnesia as well
what is retrograde amnesia
- inability to retrieve explicit information acquired before brain injury
- can’t remember old declarative memories
- often temporally graded
- pure form (without anterograde) rare
what did patient H.M. have
anterograde amnesia and temporally graded retrograde amnesia
- no new memories
- no memory for 11 years prior to surgery
- intact remote memory (childhood)
explain H.M. memory chart
on paper
what areas of the brain are responsible /associated with memory
- hippocampus
- parahippocampal, entorhinal and perirhinal cortices
- amygdala
- mammillary bodies
- medial temporal lobe (MTL)
give some examples of how implicit memory is spared in amnesia
motor and cognitive
- mirror reading
- tower of hanoi
priming intact
-word stem completion
explain the mirror reading study
groups of Korsokoff’s amnesics and normal patients
methods
- experiment included 50% repeated words across 4 days
- non repeated words: implicit
- repeated words: explicit and implicit
results
- for new words, normals and amnesics improved about the same (implicit only)
- for old words, normals were better than amnesics (implicit and explicit)
explain how priming is one example of implicit memory
- a previous encounter with information facilitates later performance on the same information
- facilitation in the processing of a stimulus as a function of a recent encounter with the same stimulus
- can occur even if there is no conscious recollection of having encountered the information before
participants with amnesia can also do visual priming with images
explain word fragment completion
1) view list of words
2) complete word fragments (some on list, some not)
results:
-amnesics show normal priming (complete more words on list than words not), but poor recognition memory (don’t know they saw the words)
what parts of the brain does word stem completion activate
explicit: hippocampus and frontal lobe activity
implicit: posterior visual area activity
what hippocampal regions are involved in memory
- sensory areas are involved in memory for that type of info (IT cortex for visual objects)
- sensory regions are also involved in repetition priming
- basal ganglia: skill and habit learning
explain the amygdala and memory
- amygdala is involved in emotional memories
- also involved in “fear conditioning”
- also modulates consolidation process in hippocampus during retention phase
what are the different kinds of memory
declarative/explicit, non-declarative/implicit, episodic, semantic and procedural
what is declarative/explicit memory
conscious, know the source
what is non-declarative/implicit memory
nonconscious, don’t know the source
what is episodic memory
conscious, memory for stuff that happened at certain time
ex. what you did before class
what is semantic memory
knowledge (conscious memory), cannot pinpoint where you learned it, but you know it
ex. who is the current president?
what is procedural memory
implicit, learning how to do things
ex. playing the piano
what is Alzheimer’s disease
- no cure, degenerative, terminal
- most common form of dementia
- leading cause of death
- progression usually starts in hippocampus; covers full brain
-symptoms: memory loss, language/speech difficulty, impaired judgement, later on: perceptual and motor difficulty
how is Alzheimer’s different than amnesia
slower progressing (not one traumatic event), covers full brain, and affects other things (not just memory)
what causes Alzheimer’s
amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles
-neurons stop functioning and lose connections
