The human brain is a fantastical machine, capable of great feats of elasticity and resourcefulness. This is no clearer demonstrated than in the case of E.P, and the separation of memory and habit. I found it fascinating that E.P was able to follow the path of the walk he took with his wife but was unable to identify which house was his. This incredible idea of the brain recovering from a debilitating problem as best it can is quite interesting. I did not think that habit and memory were so separated that one could lose the ability to form new memories but could form habits that were so similar to the perceptions of memory. The cases of H.M and E.P also offer valuable insight into the roles that differing components of the brain assume. The hippocampus is vital for memory, and also vital for living a certain quality of life. Meanwhile, the medial temporal lobe also impacts memory, but E.P was able to live at home and maintained a high level of intellect. The fact that both H.M and E.P could live without large sections of their brains is remarkable, and reveals a lot about the elasticity and adaptations of the brain. However, E.P’s case truly highlights the divide between memory and habit. Habits can occur with a low level of brain activity and conscious thought, as they are mostly driven by the unconscious once the cue is received. As long as the basal ganglia is intact, it appears that habits will form, and these habits are on a delicate equilibrium. With one disturbance,
74. Raymond remembers, “When I was a sophomore, I took the hardest physics test of my life, and I was happy with my C.” This memory represents a(n)
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.
The Evidence for the Existence of Multiple Memory Systems Memory forms an important part of cognitive psychology and has been of interest to numerous psychologists. This essay is going to refer specifically to the information-processing model of memory and will discuss the experimental evidence that exists for multiple memory systems. The multi-store model of memory was first developed by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) and Waugh and Norman (1965).[1] It comprises sensory stores, short term-store and long-term store to form a model of memory and information processing. One component of the system is the sensory register, where our feature detection and pattern recognition processes produce a
Since hippocampus plays an important function in the brain, it has become a great topic for many conducted research not only on human but also animals, specifically primates and rodents. In primate model of amnesia, the experiment is performed through three main tasks – delayed nonmatch to sample, object discrimination paradigm and motor skill learning across multiple trials (Eichenbaum et al, 1992). In delayed non-matching test, both amnesic and intact monkey show nearly same performance rate in remembering objects across delayed in short period of time (Eichenbaum et al, 1992). In contrast, amnesic monkeys show a great impairment for longer delayed conditions, hours, in picking the right non-matched samples (Eichenbaum et al, 1992). Likewise, in object discrimination task, amnesic monkeys are unable to recognize objects, as compared to control monkeys (Eichenbaum et al, 1992).These tests suggest the importance of hippocampus in acquisition of new information and recollection old events from episodic memory. Additionally, hippocampus also contributes largely to relational representation, as a characteristic of declarative memory (Eichenbaum et al, 1992). This can be shown through odor discrimination and place
How does memory work? Is it possible to improve your memory? In order to answer these questions, one must look at the different types of memory and how memory is stored in a person's brain.Memory is the mental process of retaining and recalling information or experiences. (1) It is the process of taking events, or facts and storing them in the brain for later use. There are three types of memory: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.
The temporal lobe plays an important role in episodic memory. Episodic memory represents the memory system that is used when we consciously remember a particular period in our lives and enables us to learn new information. Damage to the hippocampus in the predominant stages of Alzheimer’s fundamentally affects episodic memory. AD patients are not able to recall memory of recent events but are able to recall long term information. Semantic memory stores conceptual and factual knowledge, with the ability to recognise, name and categorized objects. These memories are not related to episodic memories. The semantic system includes the temporal lobes and multiples areas in the cortex and damage to these areas results in loss of recognition of common objects. Specific characteristics of semantic categories will deteriorate, first the ability to recognise fine categories, such as type of animal or type of object. The lack of refinement will lead to the ability to recognise general categories, such as animal rather than a specific type. The ability to learn cognitive and behaviour skills is known as procedural memory. Procedural memory is located in the cerebellum and here memories operate at an automatic and unconscious level. Working memory signifies the ability to momentarily preserve and control information that is needed in everyday life. Areas of the brain that are directly linked to memory are dramatically affected by Alzheimer’s disease. Without the ability to recall information one has previously learnt or store new memories, then one can not obtain new information and apply new or old skills. As the cerebellum is responsible balance and movement everyday things like walking will be difficult as Alzheimer’s suffers will lose their unconscious memory of how to to
The two concepts that I resonated with are Memory and the Psychodynamic theory. Starting with the Psychodynamic theory is an approach to psychology that studies the psychological forces underlying human behavior, feelings, and emotions, and how they may relate to early childhood experience. This theory is most closely associated with the work of Sigmund Freud, and with psychoanalysis, a type of psychotherapy that attempts to explore the patient’s unconscious thoughts and emotions so that the person is better able to understand him or herself. The second one is Memory; understanding how memory works will help you improves your memory. Which is an essential key to attaining knowledge. Memory is one of the important cognitive processes. Memory involves remembering and forgetting. I chose the two concepts because throughout the class they stood out to the most. Understanding the conscious, subconscious mind and also memory. I’m interested in understanding the human behavior.
Squire et al. (2004) argue that the medial temporal lobe is essential to the system for conscious “declarative” (conscious) memory. In contrast, in Henke (2010)’ s view, the role of the medial temporal lobe, especially the hippocampus, is to support rapid encoding of flexible associations (i.e. episodic memory) regardless of conscious awareness. She indicates that consciousness is not a necessary feature of hippocampus related memories. Henke also does not use the term “declarative memory” since not all the hippocampus-dependent memory can be consciously “declared”.
But I always don’t feel like going to bed that early, so I would secretly watch some cartoons on TV. My mom would check on me later to see if I fall asleep, every time when I heard the sounds of her footsteps, I got so nervous that my heart rate would speed up and turn off my TV immediately. After a period of time, I would feel nervous and shut my TV when I heard my mom’s footsteps even during daytime that I was allowed to watch cartoons. After classical conditioning, even our brain forgets, our body will still react to the stimulus. In the book “The Accidental Mind” by David Linden, the author addresses that amnesiacs retains the ability of learn simple associations through classical conditioning. Moreover, hippocampal amnesiacs trained in this task for several days will have no memory of the previous day’s training, but their heart rate will accelerate in response to the stimulus which paired with the reflex earlier. This shows once someone’s body links the stimulus to certain response, it is hard to forget even your brain can’t recall right away. With the theory, doctors can use certain stimulus to help amnesiacs to learn simple tasks, which can be a good
I picked this article because I was fascinated by H.M.’s case and I think memory is a very interesting topic in psychology because its one of the things that defines and makes us human. Psychological movies have always been my thing and when I stumble upon movies about one of the characters losing their memory or already have memory loss, it intrigues me that actual people have actually experienced memory loss for different reasons. It’s crazy how one can lose their declarative memory but can still have their non-declarative memory, because most people would think that this particular person has no long term memory yet they may still be able to remember the things they love to do and be classically conditioned if its necessary.
Although visual art is looked upon differently by all, everyone has a either a favorite piece or at least something that catches their eye. Personally, I don’t have a piece of art that I would label my absolute favorite, but during a Spanish research project found that Salvador Dali’s work really stood out. “The Persistence of Memory” painted in 1931 by Dali, a highly renowned surrealist painter, is among the most interesting works I have ever seen. Even though the painting itself is rather simple in quality at first glance, what Dali’s must have been thinking about while creating this work is strikingly complex. The painting is attractive to me because it deals with the concept of time, something
Memory makes us. It is, to an extent, a collection of unique and personal experiences that we, as individuals, have amassed over our lifetime. It is what connects us to our past and what shapes our present and the future. If we are unable remember the what, when, where, and who of our everyday lives, our level of functioning would be greatly impacted. Memory is defined as or recognized as the “sum or total of what we remember.” Memory provides us the ability to learn and adjust to or from prior experiences. In addition, memory or our ability to remember plays an integral role in the building and sustaining of relationships. Additionally, memory is also a process; it is how we internalize and store our external environment and experiences. It entails the capacity to remember past experiences, and the process of recalling previous experiences, information, impressions, habits and skills to awareness. It is the storage of materials learned and/or retained from our experiences. This fact is demonstrated by the modification, adjustment and/or adaptation of structure or behavior. Furthermore, we as individuals, envision thoughts and ideas of the present through short-term memory, or in our working memory, we warehouse past experiences and learned values in long-term memory, also referred to as episodic or semantic memory. Most importantly, memory is malleable and it is intimately linked to our sense of identity and where we believe we belong in the world.
First off, we are creatures. We are animals. We're very sophisticated and good-looking and all that, but let's never forget that we're made of flesh and blood. In particular, our brains are incredibly complex evolved machines. Our brains govern basic processes such as breathing and food intake, and also enable us to appreciate the finer points of John Cleese's performances in Fawlty Towers.
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.