week 5: amnesia

Question 1

organic vs psychogenic amnesia

Answer 1

• organic: resulting from a physical cause (brain damage/resection)
• psychogenic: no known physical cause

Question 2

retrograde amnesia generally

Answer 2

• loss of memories hat were previously formed and accessible
• caused by: severe blow to the head, cardiovascular incident (stroke)
• leads to disruption in oxygen and nutrient flow to neurons
• if this lasts long, neurons die
• most of what is lost is personal ABM
• non-declarative and semantic info often are intact
• disrupts consolidation

Question 3

Ribot’s gradient

Answer 3

• amnesia is more severe for more recently formed memories
• older memory=more well consolidated

Question 4

forgetting vs ribots

Answer 4

• memories right after formation are not consolidated and are more likely to be lost when there is damage
• forgetting dclines vs ribots inclines as memories come back
• opposite of retention curve

Question 5

jost’s law

Answer 5

rate of forgetting slows down (bc more memories are well-consolidated and therefore less likely to be forgotten

Question 6

which memories are first to return for retrograde amnesia

Answer 6

older memories (more consolidated)

Question 7

what happens to memories of right before the incident that causes retrograde amnesia

Answer 7

they are forgotten/never recovered bc disruption hits them when they are in a fragile state

Question 8

in case studies of retrograde amnesia, what was found in pateints ML and DR?

Answer 8

• completely intact memory for public events, language, new visual/verbal memory
• related to ABM not semantic

Question 9

in case studies of retrograde amnesia, what was found in pateints PS?

Answer 9

• war vet
• stroke at 67, causing thalamic damage
• profound memory loss for everything except wartime
• interpreted everything through a 1940s lens

Question 10

electroconvulsive therapy helps w depression symptoms but leads to what?

Answer 10

brief anterograde and sustained retrograde amnesia

Question 11

anterograde amnesia

Answer 11

• inability to store new memories after injury
• effects: no distinctiveness, no novelty, fewer definitive articles (saying a kitchen vs the), poorer decision making, poorer future imagining, mental time travel, imagining future
• targets: conscious, declarative memory (incl. SM, ABM, and EM)
• preserved performance on indirect tests, and preserved recognition compared to recall

Question 12

HM

Answer 12

• damage beyond hippocampus
• normal intelligence, personality, lang ability and short term memory
• can learn new facts but only w massive repetition

Question 13

diencenphalon

Answer 13

• above brainstem
• includes: thalamus, hypothalamus, and mammillary bodies
• connections w frontal lobe
• can be damaged via Korsakoff’s syndrome (B1 deficiency related to alcoholism)

Question 14

amnesia from damage to diencephalon

Answer 14

• frontal thalamic connections
• thalamus has strong connections w frontal regions relevant to memory
• connections drive: coordination, thought control, organization of memory, coordination of retrieval, and inhibition)
• leads to confabulation (fabricating or distorting ones memory abt self and world)
• no intent to deceive but they produce false memories

Question 15

what happened with patient Ab (anterograde amnesia)

Answer 15

• Hematoma causing damage to posterolateral frontal lobe, adjacent parietal lobe
• Could not retain lists of words, but could maintain complex narratives in memory

Question 16

what happened with patient TR (anterograde amnesia)

Answer 16

• Cerebral anoxia after heart failure, likely hippocampal damage
• Remembered events, but not who was there

Question 17

transient global amnesia

Answer 17

• organic cause of temporary memory loss, especially for recent past
• global (both retro and anterograde)
• typically goes away fast, often within hours
• Sm is fine, but trouble with EM

Question 18

semantic amnesia

Answer 18

• deficit in ability to retrieve semantic knowledge
• cause: damage to temporal lobes, anterolateral portions
• rare if no neuro disorder (ie alzheimers)
• difficulty w word meaning
• maybe: more difficulty w concrete than abstract words

Question 19

anomia

Answer 19

difficulty with finding words/ knowing word meaning

Question 20

apraxia

Answer 20

unable to move/perform tasks when asked. for amnesia, ppl have difficultly knowing what to do with an item

Question 21

Broca’s aphasia

Answer 21

• anterior frontal lobe
• adjoining lobe damage
• unable to effectively produce speech, comprehension intact

Question 22

wernikes aphasia

Answer 22

• posterior temporal lobe, adjoining parietal lobe
• production intact but unable to comprehend speech
• can lead to inability producing comprehensible speech

Question 23

amusia

Answer 23

• unclear location of damage
• difficulty comprehending/ producing music

Question 24

prosopagnosia

Answer 24

• fusiform gyrus damage
• inability to recognize faces, even ppl they know

Question 25

short term deficits

Answer 25

- often: damage to left parietal lobe, supramarginal gyrus - disrupts: Wm rehearsal - sentence comprehension difficulties

Question 26

psychogenic amnesia

Answer 26

- no measurable physical damage but driven psychologically - repression or dissociative amnesia

Question 27

repression psychogenic amnesia

Answer 27

- suppression of traumatic or threatening experiences but limited empirical evidence

Question 28

dissociative psychogenic amnesia

Answer 28

- ppl cannot remember segments of their lives, distressing - can be one of three types: - systemized: amnesia for info related to specific event - localized: amnesia for block of time (hours or weeks) - generalized: nearly ones entire life

Question 29

dissociative fugue psychogenic amnesia

Answer 29

- extremely rare - ppl forget fundamental parts of their identity (ie where they live) - different states: - fuge and flight: change in identity and location - memory fugue: loss of memories but identity is still intact - regression fugue: reversion to earlier life state, memory loss after that period - when memories return slowly, memories from fugue state are often forgotten

Question 30

DID

Answer 30

- dissociative identity disorder - alternative identities, each with its own autobio memory - often w amnesia for other identity's experiences that differ across identities - asymmetrical amnesia: one identity may remember info when another identity was dominate but not vise versa