Memory and perception

Question 1

memory is not a single function

Answer 1

episodic, semantic, working, procedural can be disassociated and disrupted damage to memory - amnesia

Question 2

neurology

Answer 2

hippocampus, amygdala in medial temporal lobe

Question 3

anterograde amnesia

Answer 3

poor ability to acquire new information
- working and before damage memory spaced
specifically:
- impaired declarative - episodic and semantic
- non declarative - perceptual and procedural

Question 4

causes

Answer 4

disorders
- thiamine
- alcoholism
- degeneration of mamillary bodies
temporal lobectomy
- bilateral removal of temporal lobes

Question 5

patient HM

Answer 5

major seizures, drugs failed, surgical removal of anterior hippocampal regions
- circumcised lesion
- successful combating epilepsy
- pure deficits - specific to formation of new memories

• could learn new motor skills
• improvements STM, lost in LTM
• deficits to semantic and episodic memory

Question 6

intact working memory

Answer 6

digit span, unless interrupted, rate of forgetting normal, hold conversation but wont remember

Question 7

semantic memory disrupted, absence of new episodic memory

Answer 7

• date and age prior
• post operation not remembered
• location of new home forgotten

Question 8

experimental design

Answer 8

dissociations same tasks impaired - others spared
- use different resources
“solution” double dissociations

anterograde - since lesion
retrograde - prior to lesion

Question 9

retrograde amnesia

Answer 9

• temporally graded
• old memories intact
• memories immediately before lost

Question 10

neurology

Answer 10

• hippocampus doesnt store memories
• not completely understood
• consolidation of new memories
  consolidation timeline
• photos of celebrities, retrograde amnesia spans decade, distant memories preserved

Question 11

neuropsychology/ visual perception

Answer 11

occipital lobes and surrounding temporal and parietal
vision
agnosia or optic ataxia
visual agnosia
- inability to recognise
- modality specific

Question 12

apperceptive

Answer 12

unable to perceive full shape of object despite intact low level processing
- inability to extract global structure
- acuity, brightness discrimination
- impairments in drawing and copying

Question 13

associative

Answer 13

intact ability to recognise whole form, inability to draw from verbal instruction

Question 14

prosopagnosia

Answer 14

apperceptive - faces
associative - meaning to face
damage to fusiform gyrus in lower occipital and temporal lobe
perceive global structure

Question 15

are faces special?

Answer 15

configuration of features
- perception of configuration
- specialised face processing system process holistically
- prosopragnosics difficulty when other categories
- FFA > birds and cars