---amnesia---

Question 1

what is amnesia

Answer 1

severe impairment to LTM

caused by brain damage

Question 2

HM

Answer 2

• Became amnesic in 1953 following a bilateral removal in the hippocampal zone (an (ill) attempt to cure his epilepsy).
• Can remember childhood events (Scoville & Milner, 1957).
• Memory generally poor for events after the operation.

Question 3

clive wearing

Answer 3

• British musician and conductor.
• Acute and long-lasting case of anterograde and retrograde amnesia, meaning that he lacks both the ability to form new memories and to recall some aspects of his past memories.
• Herpes virus attacked CNS damaging his hippocampus.
• “Wakes up” every 20s.
• Has no knowledge of ever learning music (but can play the piano still).

Question 4

korsakoff syndrome

Answer 4

• Alcohol related problem in metabolizing the vitamin thiamine, which leads to brain damage in areas of the hippocampus and diencephalon, resulting in loss of episodic memory.
• But (Cermak, 1976) – the amnesia from Korsakoffs is “less pure” as there is also subtle damage to other areas including frontal lobes.
• Gradual onset and more widespread damage makes it harder to interpret findings.

Question 5

problems with using korsakoff’s syndrome to understand amnesia

Answer 5

• Problems with using patients with Korsakoff’s syndrome to understand amnesia.
• Gradual onset.
• Widespread brain damage.
• Inconsistent in which areas of the brain are affected.
• Brain plasticity.

Question 6

retrograde amnesia

Answer 6

• Inability to recall information/events from before the critical incident.
• Particularly affects episodic memories compared with semantic memories (Spiers et al., 2001).
• Usually associated with damage to cortical and neocortical structures.

Question 7

anterograde amnesia

Answer 7

• Problem with consolidation of memories (Isaac & Mayes, 1999).
• Could be caused by damage to subcortical areas.

Question 8

corticol areas of the brain

Answer 8

are where many of our higher-level functions take place, such as language processing and decision making.

Question 9

sub-corticol areas of the brain

Answer 9

the areas below the cortical areas of the brain, are involved with more primitive functions (i.e., emotion processing in the amygdala)

• Normal intelligence.
• Some Long term remaining memory abilities.
• Good STM performance.

Question 10

Focal retrograde amnesia.

Answer 10

• Retrograde amnesia in the absence of Anterograde amnesia is called Focal retrograde amnesia.

Question 11

Retrograde Amnesia: How do we examine recall accuracy? Patient E.D.

Answer 11

examined 5 years after diagnosis of retrograde amnesia.
• No anterograde amnesia.
• Examined recollection of famous events, people and cars.
• Selective deficit for public figures/events in the past 20-30 years.
• But fine on famous cars – an interest of theirs prior to diagnosis.

Question 12

patient P.Z.

retrograde amnesia

Answer 12

• Experimental Psychologist, completed memoirs before contracting Korsakoff.
• Memoirs enabled estimation of events and of how long he had known people. The earlier the information had occurred the better recall he had from it.
• Temporally graded loss of knowledge – could remember earlier colleagues more than recent(ish) colleagues.

Question 13

ribots law

Retrograde amnesia

Answer 13

states that recent memories are more likely to be lost than the more remote memories. -This is the typical finding for retrograde amnesia.
Memories further back in time are lost to a lesser degree