Transcript memory - Haiku

DAY 3
Fun Stuff re: Encoding Failure
What is the color on the top stripe of the American Flag?
Bottom stripe color?
A wooden pencil that isn’t round typically has how many
sides?
In what hand does the Statue of Liberty hold her torch?
What is on the back of a $10 bill? A $5 bill? A $1 bill?
What four words besides “In God We Trust” appear on
most US coins?
LTP
Long-Term Potentiation: an
increase in a synapse’s firing
after brief, rapid stimulation.
Believed to be a neural basis
for learning and memory.
We know about LTP’s effect because:
 Drugs that block LTP interfere with learning
 Mutant mice engineered to lack an enzyme needed for
LTP can’t learn their way out of a maze
 Rats given a drug that enhances LTP will learn a maze
with half the usual number of mistakes
 Injecting rats with a chemical that blocks the
preservation of LTP erases recent learning
Glutamate
Glutamate is a neurotransmitter
that enhances synaptic
communication (LTP). It remains
to be seen whether such drugs can
boost memory without nasty side
effects and without cluttering our
minds with trivia best forgotten.
Flash-Bulb Memories
A clear memory of an emotionally
significant moment or event.
When stress hormones are released,
you are more likely to remember such
an event.
Where were you on September 11, 2001
when you found out about the attacks?
H.M.
 Famous patient who had the inability to form new
memories after a piece of his brain had been removed.
 His symptoms presented the way Drew Barrymore’s
character did in 50 First Dates.
Please take a moment to
differentiate Implicit Memory
and Explicit Memory
Nondeclarative vs. Declarative
Retrieval: Getting Memory Out
Recall: a measure of memory in which the person must
retrieve info stored earlier like a fill-in-the-blank test.
Recognition: A measure of memory in which the
person needs to identify items previously learned like
on a multiple-choice test.
Relearning: a measure of memory that assesses the
amount of time saved when learning material for the
second time
Priming: the activation, often
unconsciously of particular
associations in memory.
Deja Vu: the eerie sense that “I’ve
experienced this before.”
Mood-Congruent Memory
The tendency to recall
experiences that are
consistent with one’s current
good or bad mood.
We’ve talked about memory but…
Why do we
forget?
Three Sins of Forgetting
 Absent-mindedness: inattention to details (our mind is
elsewhere as we lay down the car keys.)
 Transience: Storage decay over time (after we part ways
with former classmates, unused information fades.)
 Blocking: inaccessibility of stored information (seeing
an actor in an old movie, we feel the name on the tip of
our tongue but experience retrieval failure, we cannot
get it out.)
Three Sins of Distortion
 Misattribution: confusing the source of information
(putting words in someone else’s mouth or
remembering a dream as an actual happening)
 Suggestibility: the lingering effects of misinformation
(a leading question—Did Mr. Jones touch your private
parts?”—later becomes a young child’s false memory)
 Bias: Belief-colored recollections (current feelings
toward a friend may color our recalled initial feelings.)
One Sin of Intrusion
Persistence: Unwanted
memories (being haunted
by images of sexual
assault.)