MEMORY

Question 1

Declarative Memory

Answer 1

Includes facts (sematic) and events (episodic)

Question 2

Retrograde amnesia

Answer 2

Forget things you already knew

Question 3

Anterograde amnesia

Answer 3

Inability to form new memories

Question 4

Patient H.M.

Medial temporal lobe damage

Answer 4

– Substantial amount of hippocampus, perirhinal and entorhinal cortex surgically removed to treat epilepsy
– Profound anterograde amnesia, but normal procedural memory (no change in IQ, perception, personality)

Question 5

Hippocampus

Answer 5

May act as an indexing system, to access memories stored elsewhere
Hippocampus interacts with neocortex, to consolidate and retrieve memories
Some data suggests that hippocampus only required during gradual consolidation of permanent memory (e.g., less than a few years after initial experience)

Declarative memories stored in the neocortex

Functions: Episodic memory and Spatial navigation

Question 6

Episodic memory

Answer 6

– Capacity to consciously remember personally experienced events
– Mental time travel in subjectively experienced time
Example:
– Remember past self-centered event
– Relive the moments in your mind
– Think about people you met
– Think about sights seen
– Think about sounds heard
– Think about scents smelled

Question 7

Pattern separation

Answer 7

Episodic memory features the ability to discriminate between similar experiences:
– That is, keep memories distinct and resistant to interference or confusion
– The ability to distinguish similar patterns and experiences

Question 8

Pattern completion

Answer 8

Episodic memory features the ability to access memories using noisy recall cues:
– That is, a complete stored memory can be recalled even with a degraded cue
– The ability to retrieve past experiences from partial input

Question 9

What is the role of the hippocampus in episodic memory?

Answer 9

Hippocampus binds cortical inputs into integrated memory trace (conjunctive encoding):
– Includes pattern separation
Hippocampus reinstates previous activity patterns (retrieval):
– Includes pattern completion

Question 10

Semantic memory

Answer 10

– Acquired knowledge about the world
Examples:
– Names and physical attributes of objects
– Origins and history of objects
– Names and attributes of actions
– Abstract concepts and their names
– Knowledge of how people behave and why
– Opinions and beliefs
– Knowledge of historical events
– Knowledge of causes and effects
– Associations between concepts
– Categories and their bases

Question 11

Amodal hub

Answer 11

in anterior temporal cortex (through which modality-specific regions communicate)

Question 12

Response characteristics of temporal lobe neurons

Answer 12

Temporal lobe contains category-selective cells:
– Cells that respond selectively to particular categories of information
E.g., Face-selective cells in the inferior temporal cortex:
– Cells that respond best to visual images of faces
Category-selective cells in medial temporal cortex:
– Categories represented include scenes, animals, food…
Concept cells:
– Multimodal invariance
– High specificity
– Conscious recognition

Question 13

Multimodal invariance

Answer 13

Similar neuronal response to individual or object regardless of whether they were viewed from
different angles, identified from text or speech

Question 14

LTP and LTD can be induced in human temporal cortex, similar to rodent studies:

Answer 14

– Low-frequency (1Hz) stimulation produced LTD
– High-frequency (100Hz) stimulation produced LTP