Lecture 5: How many types of memory are there?

Question 1

William James (1890)’s Principles of Psychology

Answer 1

Distinguished between primary and secondary memory

Question 2

Lashley’s Law of Mass Effect

Answer 2

“The degree of (memory deficit) seems proportionate to the amount of tissue destroyed, irrespective of the locus of the injury”

Question 3

Case study HM:

Answer 3

Had frequent seizures throughout his life
Eventually opted for bilateral removal or medial temporal-lobe resection

Question 4

Retrograde Amnesia (memory damage)

Answer 4

Childhood memories

Question 5

Anterograde Amnesia - (Memory damage)

Answer 5

Can’t remember new experiences

Question 6

What happened to HM as a result of the removal:

Answer 6

Anterograde amnesia
Immediate memory loss
Partial retrograde amnesia
Retained memory for early childhood

Question 7

How to formalise H.M’s impairment

Answer 7

Formal test - IQ (112) and MQ (67)

Question 8

HM unimpaired at delayed match-to-sample tasks explained

Answer 8

In zero delay condition his memory was unimpaired - intact STM
Could remember trigrams for 40 seconds no evidence for STM

Question 9

Main thing H.M. proved about memory

Answer 9

Short and long term memory are two distinct stores

Question 10

Brain regions that support working memory in humans:

Answer 10

Frontal lobe patients are impaired at organized search (working memory)
People with frontal lobe lesions make more errors at higher loads (Owen et al, 1990)

Question 11

Neural mechanisms for maintaining information in brain (persistent activity):

Answer 11

Money had to remember which location the apple was in and respond by touching the apple
Huge cluster of neurons found in the delay period when the monkeys had to remember the location of the apple

Question 12

Key points about different neurochemical systems in the brain

Answer 12

Different neurotransmitter systems project to different brain regions
Each neurotransmitter can bind to specific types of receptors

Question 13

Spatial delayed alternation task

Answer 13

Trial 1 visit one location
Trial 2 visit another
Trial 3 revisit location 1
Vice versa
Vary the delay period between trials

Question 14

Brozoski et al, 1979 Dopamine findings

Answer 14

Depletion of dopamine has been found to impair working memory performance in moneys
Serotonin and noradrenaline no effects

Question 15

Effect of Methylphenidate on spatial working memory:

Answer 15

Prescribed for people with ADHD
Works by blocking the dopamine transported (DAT) and the Noradrenaline reuptake transporter (NET)
Preventing dopamine and noradrenaline reuptake
Leaving more dopamine in the synaptic cleft

Question 16

Effect of Methylphenidate: Within-Subject design PET scan results

Answer 16

Improved performance
Likely by affecting the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

Question 17

Part of brain responsible for STM

Answer 17

Prefrontal cortex (dopamine)

Question 18

Part of brain responsible for LTM

Answer 18

Hippocampus

Question 19

Task to test memory for skills

Answer 19

In mirror tracing participant has to trace the line between two star shapes - inner and outer shape. Without touching the lines, can be as hard as left and right reversed

Question 20

HM mirror learning (Milner, 1962)

Answer 20

Progressive improvement overtime

Question 21

Declarative LTM (Explicit)

Answer 21

Storage for facts, events and locations

Question 22

Non-Declarative LTM

Answer 22

Storage for learned skills, habits or relationships

Question 23

Patients with amnesia learning habits: Knowlton et al, (1994)

Answer 23

Tested 8 amnesiacs matched with 37 controls
Patients with amnesia were able to learn the task
Patients were systematically asked about the layout of the screen and various other details they did poorly
Can do the task with amnesia but have no conscious memory for it.

Question 24

Effect of Parkinson’s on dopamine

Answer 24

Pronounced disruption to dopamine cells
Dopamine depletion

Question 25

Effect of Parkinson's in learning habitual responses: Knowlton et al., 1996)

Answer 25

- People with PD performed significantly worse on the weather predictions task (test of habit formation) then controls or patients with amnesia’ - Despite this, patients had fully knowledgeable and recollection of the task. Unlike amnesic group.

Question 26

One -shot learning definition

Answer 26

an ML-based object classification algorithm that assesses the similarity and difference between two images

Question 27

Which type of LTM is one-shot learning?

Answer 27

Declarative

Question 28

Which type of LTM is habitual learning?

Answer 28

Non-declarative

Question 29

Which part of the brain is one-shot learning?

Answer 29

Hippocampus

Question 30

Which part of the brain is habitual learning

Answer 30

Striatum

Question 31

Priming definition

Answer 31

Priming is the change in behaviour that results from previous exposure to an item or stimulus.

Question 32

Verbal learning in amnesiacs: Warrington and Weiskrantz, 1970

Answer 32

Presented with 3 lists of 9 words tested on their retention of these words under different retrieval conditions (of degradation) Counted number of presentations of non-fully degraded word - Direct recall, and recognise- Another exposure to degraded words - Tested four patients with amnesia and 6 controls (Matched for age and intelligence) - Number of errors (not identifying the word from degradation shown

Question 33

Verbal learning in amnesiacs: Warrington and Weiskrantz, 1970 results

Answer 33

- Amnestic patients show evidence of learning - Recall - amnestic groups do poorly- Can recognise words from their fragmented forms

Question 34

Does priming depend upon the hippocampus: Schater et al (1996) Method

Answer 34

Used PET scan with radiolabelled Co2 Participants study 24 words, had to say “t” junctions in a word. They were shown these words in the scanner with three letter primes. Had to complete the words

Question 35

Does priming depend upon the hippocampus: Schater et al (1996) Results

Answer 35

When participants are responding to primed (cues) compared to novel words they show reduced blood flow in visual cortex (Schater et al, 1996)

Question 36

Schater et al (1996) Priming experiment

Answer 36

- they compared blood flow when responding to novel words (completing unseen words) to blood flow when completing the stems for seen words (e.g., having seen the word PICNIC and then shown PIC) - Authors found decreased blood flow in visual cortex when viewing primes - No change in blood flow in the hippocampus

Question 37

“what brain regions are more active when trying to complete the words for non-semantic condition to novel words”

Answer 37

- Praecuneus (medial parietal lobe) - Left prefrontal cortex

Question 38

What brain regions are more active when trying to complete the words for the semantically primed words (“PIC_____”) compared to the novel word (“REC”)

Answer 38

- Find: left and right (posterior) hippocampus - So the hippocampus is argued to be involved in conscious recollection

Question 39

Korsakoff (1989) gave patients with amnesia an electric shock:

Answer 39

- Patient has no memory of receiving the shock, but when shown the briefcase they suggested he probably came there to shock him - Even in the absence of conscious recollection patients with amnesia can remember aversive experiences unpleasant stimuli that induce changes in behaviour via negative reinforcement or positive punishment

Question 40

Bechara et al, 1995 examined the effect of lesions to the hippocampi, amygdale or both an aversive conditioning:

Answer 40

Habituation phase (exposure to neural stimuli) Skin conductance response: exposure to an arousing stimulus (or novel) stimulus activates sympathetic nervous system