H. M. Molaison's Short-Term Memory

This essay will consider evidence from studies to show the strengths and weaknesses of research methods used by cognitive neuroscientists in their understanding of the biological bases of behaviour and mental processing specifically in the case of amnesia. This will be done through the use of journals, textbooks, articles and other relevant sources to outline where the research methods are used in studies and how they aim to provide an understanding in behaviour. Research methods to be discussed include magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), electroencephalogram (EEG) and positron emission tomography (PET). Amnesia is the loss or partial loss of a large area of memories often caused by a sudden brain injury or shock. (Eysenck, 2004). Amnesia caused by trauma is often temporary but can be permanent loss of an area of memory.

Because of his anterograde amnesia, Mr. Thompson suffered from declarative memory loss; however, his nondeclarative and procedural memories appeared to be preserved. I believe that Mr. Thompson suffered from an impairment of episodic memory and retained his semantic memories because he could reflect common knowledge of the

The stage of skill acquisition in which a skill no longer relies on conscious effort is the:

Memory is defined as “the mental capacity to encode, store, and retrieve information” (American Psychological Association, 2002). It is a part of the means by which humans function. The process of forming and recalling memories involves various complex neurological processes and disruptions to these processes can result in loss of memory or the inability to form new memories. Amnesia is a memory disorder, in which, due to trauma or a head injury, certain parts of the memory is inaccessible. The two main types of amnesia are anterograde amnesia and retrograde amnesia. Anterograde amnesia refers to the inability to create new memories (Mastin, 2010). “Retrograde

A 30-year-old man named John has no memory capacity due to hippocampal damage from birth. He still cannot remember most of his past. His family tries to help him by going through old photos and watching home videos. John has to write everything down. Routines help keep him organized and learning is something he has to concentrate on more. He travels by train because of his bad memory. He has traveled by train hundreds of times but has to continue to write down directions. John gets on a train heading to see neuroscientist, Dr. Faraneh Vargha-Khadem of University College London. She discusses her work with him. The hippocampus is crucial to memory. Compared to a normal person’s, John’s hippocampus are half the size and are not automatically registering. Dr. Vargha-Khadem asks him to draw a picture she shows him. He does pretty good. One hour later, she asked him to draw the same design from memory. He could not do it. His ability was completely compromised, she said. John’s memory is stuck in the present and he will not be mentally able to time travel to the past or future.

Recollecting some of life’s experiences can be done very accurately at times where we can depict details even after a long period of time. For patient H.M. this is the exact case. Patient H.M. suffered from severe anterograde amnesia. Anterograde amnesia patients quite often show normal memory for events that have occurred prior to the incident. Therefore, making it extremely difficult to recall or store information after the incident has occurred. H.M. had been knocked down by a bicycle at the age of 7, began to have minor seizures at the age of 10, and had major seizures after the age of 16. Patient H.M. had brain surgery in the early 1950’s around the time he had been 27 years old. The surgery had been done to alleviate severe symptoms

Amnesic patients tend to suffer from permanent or temporal, normally partial or total loss of episodic memory and an impaired capacity to form and store new memories. On the other hand, they seem to demonstrate unimpaired performance of behaviours involving prior experiences on tests which do not require any intentional or conscious recollection of those experiences (Schacter, 1992). Hence, most amnesic patients demonstrate the ability to retain and learn new behaviours through priming and conditioning, and acquire new perceptual, cognitive, motor and emotional skills which cannot be traced back to an explicit memory but can be demonstrated implicitly.

Additionally, to further support these theories, researchers tend to conduct studies on the famous patient case, HM, to propose the consolidation deficit theory, in which those with amnesia cannot turn short-term memories into long-term memories (Dewar et al., 2010). However, researchers Dewar, Della Sala, Beschin, and Cowan (2010), mentioned that HM’s case does not fully explain why a patient with anterograde amnesia has the ability to get better at cognitive tasks despite being unable to recall having performed those tasks at a previous time. On the same hand, Duff, Wszalek, Tranel, and Cohen (2008) mentioned that most individuals with anterograde amnesia experience heightened intelligence, attention, skill, and reasoning levels (procedural memory).

His explicit long-term memory was mainly affected. Meaning that his mind without a hippocampus was only able to make “initial impressions” hindering him from keeping the memories for long period of time and the memories would simply just disappear (Kean, 2014). This is why he was unable to remember specific facts, events and what made him “Unable to form new memories”(Kean, 2014). The surgery also affected H.M.’s short-term memory. He was able to “Remember a random numbers for 15-minutes”, with the use of rehearsal this task would lengthen his short-term memory but he would forget that the task had even taken place 5-minutes later (Kean, 2014).

Amnesia can occur in many different forms depending on the damage caused to specific areas of the brain. Korsakoff’s syndrome is a memory disorder that is caused by a thiamine deficiency and id usually seen by people with heavy alcohol consumption (Breedlove, Watson & Rosenzweig, 2013). Medial-temporal lobectomy is the cutting of areas of the anterior temporal lobe such as the hippocampus and amygdala and this can cause long-term anterograde amnesia (Salmon, Haymon-Abello, Connolly, & McLachlan, 2014). This paper will examine both Korsakoff’s syndrome and medial-temporal lobectomy to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between the two and how they can both impact a person’s life.

Roger goes to his friend’s wedding where he is introduced to over 50 people. Roger’s goal at this wedding is to meet new people, and remember as many names as he can. In order for him to get their names into long-term memory, he first needs to get them past sensory, and short term memory. For him to be able to do this, he needs to come up with some strategies to remember these names. He will learn when it is necessary for him to rehearse the names over in his head, group some of them together, or making connections to the names. By testing out these strategies, we will learn how information moves from sensory memory to short-term memory, and hopefully to long-term memory.

Hippocampus is a small, curved region, which exists in both hemispheres of the brain and plays a vital role in emotions, learning and acquisition of new information. It also contributes majorly to long term memory, which is permanent information stored in the brain. Although long term memory is the last information that can be forgotten, its impairment has become very common nowadays. The dysfunction is exemplified by many neurological disorders such as amnesia. There are two types of amnesia, anterograde and retrograde. Anterograde amnesia is inability in forming new information, while retrograde refers to the loss of the past memory. As suggested by Cipolotti and Bird (2006), hippocampus’s lesions are

In 1985, a musicologist, and a husband to Deborah Wearing by the name of Clive Wearing, was a man in his mid-forties that suffered from a brain infection called herpes encephalitis (Sacks,2016). The infection caused damage to different regions of the brain that is connected to one’s memory (Sacks,2016). This infection caused the brain to swell up, and caused it to get crushed against the skull (France, 2005). Unfortunately, he was then diagnosed with a disorder called amnesia (Sacks,2016). Clive Wearing suffered from two types of amnesia such as, Anterograde, and Retrograde amnesia which both effected his memory (The Human Memory,2010). Retrieved from http://www.human-memory.net/disorders_anterograde.html.

Brenda Milner had Henry do a series of test to see what areas of the brain was affected by the damage. One of the tests involved HM drawing a five point star though a mirror. Each time HM would do the test Milner would time Henry to see if there was any improvement. Henry himself couldn’t remember doing the tests but his hands would remember doing the motions. Each time HM did the test his times would get better. Due to HM, Milner was able to find that humans have a form of memory called motor learning. Motor learning is a change resulting from practice and experience, which is how HM was able to get better times on the tests. Henry could also remember who celebrities or other famous people after his surgery. During an interview he was able

Case 1 tells the story of Henry Molaison (HM), a man with no memory. He lost his memory due to the operation of suctioned out the hippocampus to treat his epileptic seizures. At that time, it was not known yet that the hippocampus was essential for making memories. After operation, his seizures were significantly reduced, but Henry suffered a global amnesia. Owen et al. (2007) describes patients with global amnesia as perceptive and attentive but with a total loss of short-term memory and some trouble accessing memories of the recent past. Henry could not learn new things as he quickly forgot everything that he had learned. He could learn at a subconscious level only.