Long Term Memory & Amnesia
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Previous theories of Amnesia: encoding faliure (consolidation) rapid forgetting and Amnesic Patients typically retain old procedural retrieval failure (retroactive/proactive information and are reasonably good at learning interference, Underwood; McGeoch) new procedural skills (H.M and mirror writing) Important Current Theory: Contextual Amnesia & the Brain Linked to Conditioning: eyeblink with puf of air leads to Memory Theory (Ryan et al. 2000) medial temporal lobe and diencephalic conditioned response. Patients with amnesia impairment in integrating of binding region, including mamillary bodies and typically acquire this. contextual/relational features of memory. thalamus. Priming: Improvement or bias in performance The medial temporal lobe and hippocampus resulting from prior, supraliminal presentation of Procedural Memory are proposed to bind events to the contexts stimuli. Tulving et al. (1982) primed participants Often relatively automatic processes in which they occur. This bypasses the with a list of words and then showed them letters (requiring little attention) allowing for declarative vs procedural distinction. And (cued-recall). Recall was better for words behavioural responses to there is reasonable support for this theory presented earlier. Amnesic patients are relatively environmental cues. (Channon, Shanks et al 2006.) normal on these tasks. Long-Term Memory & Amnesia Temporary storage of information with rapid Short-Term Memory decay and sensitivity to interference. Supported by studies of recency efect (Murdock, Postman), which is taken as evidence of short Long-Term Memory Mediates declarative Double Dissociation?! but not non-declarative (procedural) memory. term memory store. Also by studies supporting subvocal speech (Baddeley, 1966) However, studies have provided evidence of Declarative Memory This is knowledge STM link with LTM retrieved by explicit, deliberate recollection. recency over long periods of time, suggesting A.K.A explicit memory. that STM is not a store but that most recently learned information just tends to be more accessible (Baddeley et al 1977.) Furthermore, if sensory memory store is post- categorical (as suggested by Neath et al.) then it Subdivisions in Semantic Memory: Warrington requires communication to long-term memory - & Shallice (1984) Patient JBR had difculty there must be some interaction. identifying living things, not non-living (although McClelland argues that this distinction is Tulving (1972) divided declarative memory in to Patient K.F (Shallice & Warrington, 1970) functional not to do with living). Suggests types two systems: semantic (factual knowledge describe a case of a person with impaired of semantic info are stored diferently. stored about the world or old memories that auditory STM but intact LTM. This suggests have become stories) and episodic (subjective Subdivisions in Episodic Memory: Warrington distinct anatomical bases for the two. knowledge stored about events in space and (1984) Suggesting that semantic memory is not time). an 'all or none' phenomenon. Double Disassociation Between Semantic & Brain Imaging Evidence of Distinction: Wheeler Episodic et al. (1997) found evidence of diferent regions. Tulving 2002 had a patient with severe episodic amnesia but only mild anterograde amnesia for semantic memory. Typically, patients (like HM) have anterograde amnesia for semantic memory and retrograde amnesia for episodic memory (temporally graded)..