Transcript Creation of Memories

Creation of Memories
How Learning Becomes a Permanent
Record: Stages of Memory
Implicit Memories
• Our implicit memories are ones we have practiced at such a deep
level, they no longer require our conscious effort:
• Interpreting people’s body language
• Navigating a hallway or highway as we walk, ride a bike and drive
• Reading, writing and talking were initially complex tasks but no
longer
• Knowing what someone is going to say or react
Explicit Memories
• Explicit memories require a concerted effort by
our conscious brain to encode
• We make an effort to acquire a new skill through
practice, practice, practice—a procedural
memory that will soon become implicit
• Declarative memories require effective
elaboration.
Effective Processing of New
Conceptual Information
• Need to be paying attention and alert
• Need to use active processing strategies such as:
State the new information aloud
Create meaningful examples of concepts
Answer questions about the material
Organize the material into an outline or concept map
Discuss the new ideas with a friend (or your dog!)
Stage when encoding new information: Is
normally referred to as our STM or Working
Memory
• Encode means to give meaning
• Why is this stage of memory called our shortterm memory?
• Why is this stage also called our working
memory?
Stage Two:
Consolidation of Memories
• Brain makes a permanent record of learning in
order to turn it into a permanent memory
• Consolidation of experience into a memory by
our hippocampus takes about 30 minutes
• If a person’s brain is in trauma is seriously or
very depressed, the hippocampus will not be
able to do its job very well, if at all!
Hippocampus
• What could damage the hippocampus? Depress
the hippocampus? Cause physical trauma to the
hippocampus?
Consolidation involves
permanent changes in our brain
• Additional neurotransmitters are produced by neurons
• Neural connections are being strengthened
• Neural connections are created
• Neurons in the circuitry are adding more dendrites
Eric Kandel used the aplysia as only has 20
thousand neurons & very large
• Apply electrode aplysia to cringe
• Over time the aplysia start to habituate to the electrode
Changes noted in aplysia
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZVxYBC
pgGs
• Youtube shows neural basis for memory
Kandel: “We are what we remember.”
• “We are what we remember.”
If hippocampus is destroyed, no new
memories can be formed
• Anterograde amnesia: living only in the present
• Clive Wearing was a brilliant choral director in Britain
when he experienced an extensive viral infection of his
brain which damaged all of his hippocampus
What his life is like because
cannot form explicit memories
• For 20 years Clive has been forgetting everything that
has just happened. All day long, he believes he has just
woken up from a deep haze.
• He can not consciously learn new ideas or abilities so
never remembers any conversations, where he is living
or why.
• In his words, his life is “Hell on earth—It’s like being
dead—all the bloody time.”
People with anterograde amnesia can
only recall their last 10-20 seconds
• When not otherwise engaged, he constantly writes in his diary
about his experience of feeling like he just woke up. Writes:
“Woke up for first time.” Then, “Now really awake!” Minutes
“Finally awake for the FIRST time!” Then, “Now REALLY
unsurpassedly awake!” Each time crosses out previous entry.
Still has implicit memories of
learned procedural skills
• When a sheet of music is put in front of him
and he is assisted in getting started, he can still
play the piano beautifully—as became implicit
Clive’s wife brings him great joy
and contentment
Each time he sees Deborah, he thinks that they are
being reunited after a long separation.
When with her, he feels
content and happy.
•
Implicitly Clive has learned certain
tasks after much repetition
• He can shave & dress himself, quite fashionably as it
turns out and walk down to kitchen & fix breakfast.
• If he is interrupted in the process however, he
becomes confused. Why?
• After 12 years of living in a very nice cottage, his sense
of anguish occurs far less often and has accepted his
situation with very little obsession about ‘waking up.’
• Can go out for dinner & converse on certain topics.
What would conversation with Clive be like?
Classic Film: “Memento”
• Main character, Lenny, experienced serious brain
trauma when attacked by drug dealers.
• His hippocampus was destroyed so no longer can form
new memories.
• However, Leonard persists in trying to find the man
who raped and murdered his wife
How could a person compensate for their
inability to create new memories?
• Lenny appears to be aware of his condition and tells
everyone he meets all about it. Why would a person
with anterograde amnesia not show this awareness?
• He compensates by putting tattoos all over his body,
making maps, and taking notes and pictures to serve as
“memories” of new information.
• In real life, people with anterograde amnesia would
never use any of these compensating strategies. Why?
Tattoo on chest says “Find the person
who raped and murdered my wife.”
Stage Three: Long Term Storage
• Memories are stored throughout our cerebral cortex
• Very difficult to totally lose a memory once formed as
each experience and idea is stored in various parts of the
conscious brain
• But severe damage to cerebral cortex can result in
retrograde amnesia—loss of stored memories
• We will view a you tube of a football player who has
lost all of his previous memories: Scott Balzans
Long term memories stored in memory
structures or memory networks
Retrograde Amnesia
• http://abcnews.go.com/Health/football-playerscott-bolzans-life-deleted-irreversibleamnesia/story?id=14616045
• Ex-Football Player’s Life is Deleted by
Retrograde Amnesia
Comparing Two Types of
Amnesia
• What is anterograde amnesia?
• What causes anterograde amnesia?
• What is retrograde amnesia?
• What causes retrograde amnesia?
Stage Four: Retrieval
• Three ways to measure memory: 1) ability to recall; 2)
ability to recognize; 3) ease at relearning the material
• Measuring ease of relearning is most sensitive
measurement of memory
• Recall is more challenging than recognition.
• Recall and recognition are both vulnerable to distortion
Exercise to show a unique quality
of retrieval
• Will provide 12 words, one on each slide
• Do not write down!
• We will discuss later what you do and do not
recall and why
• So, here we go.
REST
TIRED
AWAKE
DREAM
SNORE
BED
EAT
SLUMBER
SOUND
COMFORT
WAKE
NIGHT
Distortions occur during retrieval:
Demonstrated in 3 minute clip
• Eye witness identification influenced by events
that occur after a person witnesses a crime
• Showing mug shots can result in false
identifications
• Suggestive comments by police during
interviews reduce recall of accurate facts and
cause distortion of memories
Cognitive Interview
• Office asks witness to place themselves at the
scene of the crime
• Witness then asked to explain what happened
without one interruption except for minor
clarifications
• Recall increases by 50% with cognitive
interviews
rest
tired
awake
•
•
dream eat snore slumber comfort
• Sleep rest tired awake bed night sound
• wake
False Memories
• Elizabeth Loftus and her experiment involving
two women who had their non-existent tape
recorder stolen at train station
• Students told that their parents had provided a
story about a prank s/he had done to their first
grade teacher
• False—but customize with own name and that
of their first grade teacher
Many come to believe this truly
happened
• The most powerful method of persuasion was
when the story was coupled with an actual
photo of the participant’s first-grade classroom
• In this condition, two-thirds developed false
memories of the event
• When told later that memories were false,
expressed disbelief—”No way! I remember it!
This is so weird!”
How Can Police get False
Confessions
• Intensive and very drawn out interrogations that
make suspect feel extremely vulnerable
• Make lots of suggestions about how they went
about committing the crime
• The suspect can come to believe they committed
a crime that they did not!