Memory Disorders
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Transcript of Memory Disorders
Memory Disorders
Psychology 3717
Introduction
• The strange case of Charles D’Sousa
• Or is it Philip Cutajar?
• Rare type of disorder
• Some stuff clearly spared
QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Introduction
• Results with amnesiacs has lead to many discoveries about memory– Episodic vs. semantic memory– Procedural vs. declarative memory– Implicit vs. explicit memory– Phonological loop vs. visuo spatial
sketchpad
problems
• Taxonomy
• Individual differences
• Interpretation
• Application
• Mostly comes down to a lack of control, which of course is inevitable
Case studies
• We pretty much have to rely on these
• They are, thankfully, rare
• Usually some sort of accident or a stroke
Case SP
• Stroke patient
• Both Medial temporal lobes, left Hp and lots of surrounding area, but not the amygdala
• Had trouble naming objects
• Anterograde and retrograde amnesia
• Similar to KC
Clive Wearing
• Case of encephalitis• Pervasive amnesia• Both semantic and
episodic impairment• Temporal lobe
dilation• Hp destroyed
QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Performance Patterns
• Retrograde amnesia– Losing past memories
• Anterograde amnesia– No new memories
• Spared function– Often implicit tasks, such as priming or
ability to learn a new skill
Typically spared
• Working Memory
• Semantic memory – Even KC could learn new stuff
• Declarative information using Tulving’s method– Restrict errors
Why?
• Difficulties in interference, retrieval and encoding
• Consolidation– Tends to come down to something to do
with HP– Context or sending item off for processing
or some such thing
Semantic memory problems
• What is a cat?
• Temporal lobe problems
• Oddly enough, episodic memory often intact in these rare cases
Working Memory Problems
• There are cases of people with intact phonological loops and visuo spatial sketchpads that are pretty much toast
• And vice versa
Alzheimer’s
• More than half of all dementia is from AD
• 2 times more women than men– Could be because
women live longer though
• dementia and brain stuff– Neurofibrillary tangles
and neuritic plaques
AD
• MASSIVE cell death
• In essence, you get like lesions everywhere
• ‘cortical’ dementia, but you get these lesions, holes really, everywhere
Neurotransmitters affected
• ACh is important in memory, especially in HP
• The ACh system is severely damaged in AD
• Indeed it is almost targeted
• Other systems too though
Memory effects
• Episodic effects
• Eventually semantic effects
• Retrieval cues don’t help– Information was not even encoded
• Nondeclarative stuff, skills etc, are the last to go
Treatment
• Most drugs target the cholinergic system• This disease not only affects the victim,
but also his/her family• NGF is promising• Treatments will come, but, reversal, I
dunno• Respite care is key for the family
Conclusions
• Frankly there is not a great deal of hope for most amnesiacs
• That said, neuroscience is moving pretty fast
• Has helped us understand normal function