Memory

Memory is our brain’s ability to store, retain & recall information and experiences.

Memory has 3 processes

▪ Sensory Memory

▪ Short-Term

▪ Long-Term

Our Brain’s have 5 types of Memory

▪Episodic-

▪Semantic-

▪Working Memory-

▪ Procedural “body” –

▪ Implicit –

Our Brain’s have 5 types of Memory

Episodic- comprised of reconstruction of past experiences, including sensations, emotions. They usually unfold like movies and are experiences by one’s point of view

People are usually able to associate particular details with an episodic memory, such as how they felt, the time and place, and other particulars. It is not completely understood why we remember certain instances in our life while others go unrecorded in our episodic memories. It is believed that emotion plays a key role in our formation of episodic memories.

Examples of episodic memory

▪ Where you were and the people you were with when you found out about the 9/11 attacks

▪ Your skiing vacation last winter

▪ The first time you traveled by airplane

▪ The details about how you learned of a relative’s death

▪ Fearing water because you were knocked over by a wave at the beach as a child

▪ Your first day at a new job or school

▪ Attending a relative’s 75th birthday party

▪ Neighbors on the block where you grew up

Our Brain’s have 5 types of Memory

Semantic- is non-personal, factual knowledge that stands alone

Examples of semantic memory

▪ Knowing that grass is green

▪ Recalling that Washington, D.C., is the U.S. capital and Washington is a state

▪ Knowing how to use scissors

▪ Understanding how to put words together to form a sentence

▪ Recognizing the names of colors

▪ Remembering what a dog is

▪ Knowing how to use the phone

▪ Knowing that President John F. Kennedy was shot on Nov. 22, 1963

Semantic memory vs. episodic memory

▪ Episodic memory and semantic memory are two major types of memories that make up part of your long-term memory; together they are known as declarative memory.

▪ While episodic memory is an individual’s unique take on a particular episode — which will vary from the recollection of others who were at the same event — semantic memory is just the facts.

Our Brain’s have 5 types of Memory

Working Memory- the capacity to hold information long enough to use it

Our Brain’s have 5 types of Memory

Implicit – we don’t know that we have it, they affect our actions in subtle ways like; you may dislike a new person because they remind you of someone else.

▪ Implicit memory is sometimes referred to as unconscious memory or automatic memory. Implicit memory uses past experiences to remember things without thinking about them. The performance of implicit memory is enabled by previous experiences, no matter how long ago those experiences occurred.

▪ A subset of implicit memory, procedural memory, enables us to perform many everyday physical activities, such as walking and riding a bike, without having to give it thought. A large majority of implicit memories are procedural in nature. Procedural memory primarily involves learning new motor skills

Examples of implicit memories

▪ Recalling the words to a song when someone sings the first few words

▪ Riding a bike

▪ Performing simple cooking tasks, such as boiling water for pasta

▪ Driving a car

▪ Taking a familiar route each day, such as commuting to work or the store where you shop frequently

▪ Buttoning a shirt

▪ Completing tasks that are a routine part of a familiar job, such as sanding for a carpenter or chopping onions for a chef

▪ Recalling the rules of a simple and familiar game, such as tag or solitaire

▪ Dialing a phone

▪ Brushing your teeth

▪ Typing on a keyboard

Our Brain’s have 5 types of Memory

Procedural “body” – comprised from learning actions like: walking, swimming, riding a bike

How Accurate is Memory

▪ Most people think that a memory is like a nonfiction book or movie. Scientists have found that human memory changes constantly. Memories lose detail & become distorted as time passes. They are shaped and reshaped by people’s beliefs, expectations and views of themselves. People modify their memories to include newly learned information-even if the facts are wrong.

▪ Painful memories lost and found, are harder to find the truth especially when it comes to victims of child abuse. Between 8 and 38% of women in surveys thought they had suffered some kind of sexual abuse as a child. So

▪ Memories are distributed throughout our brains so if one part of an experience is lost, another part of it remains, example: If a memory of someone's name is lost, the memory of their face is not.

Memory (Lisa Yount-Lucent Overview Series)

Sensory Memory

The ability to look at an item for a second and then remember what it looked like.

It is processed approximately 200-500 milliseconds after an item is perceived.

Short-Term Memory

Is where memory is recalled without practicing, something that happened recently.

Short-Term Memory is dependent on the regions of the Frontal & Parietal Lobes

It is believed to rely mostly on an acoustic code for storing information.

Test 1: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/stm0.html

Test 2: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/puzmatch.html

Long-Term Memory

Is the ability to store more information for long periods of

time (life times) like phone numbers, names and address’

from when we were kidsThe penny test

http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/common_cents/index.html

Memory Glossary▪ Flashbulb Memories- are Vivid, detailed memories of events associated with strong

emotions.

▪ Eidetic Memory- The ability to remember information and its surroundings in great detail: sometimes called photographic memory.

▪ Episodic Memory- Memory for events in a person’s past: a form of explicit memory

▪ Implicit Memory- The system of memories that do not enter conscious awareness, including memories for learned skills, habits, and conditioning

▪ Long-Term Memory- Explicit memory that lasts for more than a few minutes

▪ Perceptual Memory- A form of memory in which sense perceptions are recorded in the brain for a few seconds

▪ Anterograde Amnesia- the inability to form new long term memories

▪ Acetylcholine-a neurotransmitter used by some nerve cells, including those destroyed by Alzheimer’s disease

▪ Korsakoff’s Syndrome- A kind of amnesia that usually affects alcoholics who eat a diet lacking vitamin B

▪ Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)- A disorder sometimes suffered by people who have suffered terrifying experiences; it can include nightmares and vivid memory “flashbacks”.

Memory (Lisa Yount pg 102-104)

F.Y.I

▪ Only experiences giving rise to unusually prolonged and/or intense neural activity become encoded as memories.

▪ The Hippocampus encodes new memories & helps recall others

▪ PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a condition where people have vivid memories (flashbacks) of traumatic experiences. Emotionally traumatic experiences are more likely remembered because emotion amplifies experience.

▪ It is said that, Memory does not comprise a single unitary system, but rather an array of interacting systems, each capable of encoding or registering information, storing it and making it available by retrieval. Without this capability for information storage, we could not perceive adequately, learn from the past, understand the present, or plan for the future.

▪ In the case of the psychological study of memory, there is considerable agreement that it can broadly be divided into: sensory memory, short-term or working memory, and long-term memory.

Essentials of Human Memory ( Alan D. Baddeley)

Some causes of Memory Loss

Poor Health especially lack of Vitamin B

Severe Stress & unhappiness can interfere with Memory

Alcohol slows down the nervous system and can block storage of new memories

Traumatic experiences, Head injury, Addiction

(Memory-Lisa Yount)

Memory assignment

▪ Remember as far back as you can write a one page paper about your oldest memory.

▪ What is the memory?

▪ When did it happen?

▪ How well do you remember it?

▪ Why do you think you remember it so well, or not so well?

▪ Which of the 5 types of memory is this memory?