Memory: Amnesia

Question 1

What is Amnesia?

Answer 1

• ability to take in new information is severely + usually permanently affected
• -> intelligence + attentional span + personality unaffected
• -> HM

Question 2

Who is HM?

Answer 2

• underwent surgery (epilepsy
• lost memories for events after surgery
• Affected STM

Question 3

During HM’s surgery, what was involved?

Answer 3

• bilateral removal of his medial temporal lobes
• including hippocampus
  = amnesia result of damage to the medial temporal lobe or anatomically connected regions

Question 4

What type of amnesia did HM suffer from?

Answer 4

Anterograde amnesia

- reduced ability to retain new information

Question 5

What is the Ray complex figure test?

Answer 5

• asked to copy a complex pic after delaying the recall

= poor performance in those suffering from anterograde amnesia

Question 6

Other than the Ray complex figure test, what is another way to test anterograde amnesia?

Answer 6

• Recognition memory tests for faces

- shown 50faces, then need to go over and see which ones you have seen before

Question 7

Why is it important to test both learning (recall/ recognition) and memory (verbal + visual)?

Answer 7

• there may be damage to both or just one side of the brain

= anterograde amnesia impaired on all tests

Question 8

What are people with anterograde amnesia able to do?

Answer 8

• verbal + visual STM
• Digit span
• Spatial span
• -> tap the same blocks as me, in the same order
• procedural memory: mirror tracing: Corking 1968

Question 9

What is the declarative memory theory?

Answer 9

Tulving 1972: episodic + semantic different

- Squire: Amnesia = a loss in the ability to form any new ‘declarative memories”

Question 10

What did Warrington + Weiskrantz in 1970 show about practice in anterograde amneics?

Answer 10

• priming

- over 3 consecutive days, they got a better idea of identifying the degraded information

Question 11

What is semantic memory?

Answer 11

• conceptual knowledge about the world

Question 12

How did Howard + Patterson in 1992 test for semnatic knowledge?

Answer 12

Pyramid + palm tress test
- out of the palm and oak tress, which one looks to match the pyramid
= Palm tress as it is more likely to be found where pyramids are

Question 13

What is semantic dementia?

Answer 13

• difficulty remembering the meaning of words or concepts
• not confined to one modality
  “a horse?… But what are those lines doing??”
• associated with lateral temporal cortex (left side of brain)