Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Memory and brain mechanisms
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Memory and brain mechanisms
The human brain is a complex structure that associates with different functions of our life, such as reasoning, problem solving, speaking, visual processing and the memory processing. Moreover, the brain plays a highly important role for encoding and recall different kids of memories. Since computer have been invented, people use CT and PET to discover that there have many regions in the brain are associated with memory processing. Although these technologies help people to explore better the relationship between brain and memory, however the reality cases studying can make people comprehend the impact of life closely about what if some regions of the brain have been damaged. And the experimental study in brain regions also useful for evaluating They discover that his hippocampus and some frontal regions of the brain has been damaged by the herpes simplex encephalitis (Dolores, 2013). Therefor, they summarize that the reason of why Clive suffer in the Amnesia are caused by the hippocampus is not effected. The Hippocampus is a structure that located inside in the temporal lobe, and that is a part of the limbic system. The function of Hippocampus is similar to a post office used for encoding, storage and recalling memories, all presenting information would first remain, analysis and encoded in the Hippocampus then transmit them to different areas of the brain. In other word, Clive cannot able to encode memory and held information which is currently aware, and difficult to forming new long-term memory such as explicit and semantic memory in his life. Clive Wearing now 78 years old already, he still cannot recover from the anterograde amnesia, he becomes a man who has the shortest memory in the world. His daily life has been influenced by his memory problem completely, he can remember his wife and play piano, however, he expresses surprise and exciting when his wife leave him about few second. Herpes simplex encephalitis also destroyed his frontal regions, that cause him have a poor emotional processing. He often gets angry and not able to cope with his emotional expression, especially when he senses that he is forgetting something again. He cannot remember events before he engaged in surgery, similar to Clive Wearing, he cannot form new memory after the surgery (Godwin, 2013). In other word, Henry cannot encode and compose short-term memory, and recall long-term memory of his past experience. Additionally, Henry’s amygdala also has been removed from this surgery, that cause him obstruct to learn fear from daily life and remember some unpleasant events. Therefore, Henry always expresses happiness more than sad and unhappy emotion. It is an interesting finding which amygdala is associated with fear memory and emotional expression. Henry Gustav died in
Hippocampus is a small, curved region, which exists in both hemispheres of the brain and plays a vital role in emotions, learning and acquisition of new information. It also contributes majorly to long term memory, which is permanent information stored in the brain. Although long term memory is the last information that can be forgotten, its impairment has become very common nowadays. The dysfunction is exemplified by many neurological disorders such as amnesia. There are two types of amnesia, anterograde and retrograde. Anterograde amnesia is inability in forming new information, while retrograde refers to the loss of the past memory. As suggested by Cipolotti and Bird (2006), hippocampus’s lesions are responsible for both types of amnesia. According to multiple trace theory, the author suggests that hippocampal region plays a major role in effective retrieving of episodic memory (Cipolotti and Bird, 2006). For example, patients with hippocampal damage show extensively ungraded retrograde amnesia (Cipolotti and Bird, 2006). They have a difficult time in retrieving information from their non-personal episodic events and autobiographical memory. However, this theory conflicts with standard model of consolidation. The difference between these theories suggests that researchers need to do more work to solve this controversy. Besides retrieving information, hippocampus is also important in obtaining new semantic information, as well as familiarity and recollection (Cipolotti and Bird, 2006). For instance, hippocampal amnesic patient V.C shows in ability to acquire new semantic knowledge such as vocabularies and factual concepts (Cipolotti and Bird, 2006). He is also unable to recognize and recall even...
War changes a person in ways that can never be imagined. Living in a war as well as fighting in one is not an experience witnessed in everyday life. Seeing people die every time and everywhere you go can be seen as an unpleasant experience for any individual such as Henry. The experiences that Henry had embraced during the Vietnam War have caused him to become an enraged and paranoid being after the war. It has shaped him to become this individual of anxiety and with no emotions. The narrator says:
We learn that when Henry comes home from the war, he is suffering from PTSD. "It was at least three years before Henry came home. By then I guess the whole war was solved in the governments mind, but for him it would keep on going" (444). PTSD changes a person, and it doesn 't always stem from war. Henry came back a completely different person. He was quiet, and he was mean. He could never sit still, unless he was posted in front of the color TV. But even then, he was uneasy, "But it was the kind of stillness that you see in a rabbit when it freezes and before it will bolt"
Henry suffers from retrograde amnesia due to internal bleeding in the part of the brain that controls memory. This causes him to forget completely everything he ever learned. His entire life is forgotten and he has to basically relearn who he was, only to find he didn’t like who he was and that he didn’t want to be that person. He starts to pay more attention to his daughter and his wife and starts to spend more time with them.
The hippocampus has been associated with memory formation and consolidation, through lesions studies of bilateral medial temporal lobectomy patients, such as the famously amnesic H.M. In 1971 with the discovery of place cells by O’Keefe and Dostrovsky, spatial navigation was recognised as one of the primary roles of the hippocampus, with their 1978 book ‘The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map' O’Keefe and Nadel’s hypothesis has since commanded great influence in the field.
Discussed by Cipolotti & Bird (2006), LTM impairments can lead to anterograde and retrograde amnesia if the medial temporal lobe (MTL) is damaged bilaterally. Specifically, the two most important types of LTM related to anterograde and retrograde amnesia are episodic and semantic memories. Conversely, many researchers have long debated the true functions of the hippocampus and have allowed two theories to emerge. The standard model of consolidation (SMC) assumes that the hippocampus is important in consolidating LTM, while the multiple trace theory (MTT) argues that information is encoded by specific memory traces by the hippocampus. These two theories help further explain the vast functions of the hippocampus.
Memory is a dynamic part of everyday life. It helps people function and communicate with each other without a second thought. This communication and function can be hindered if the person experiences a traumatic event. There are two main forms of trauma, physical and emotional, each of which can cause major damage to the victims mind. Both types can cause a person to have flashbacks to the traumatic event or even temporary amnesia. In his novel Remainder, Tom McCarthy uses The Narrator to demonstrate a case of physical trauma where The Narrator has an object fall on his head placing him in a coma. The second type of trauma, emotional trauma, is represented by Grandfather in Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Everything is Illuminated where grandfather experiences a traumatic situation when he was younger but represses the memory of what happened. Foer uses Grandfather to demonstrate the struggle to overcome the trauma when he chooses to repress his memories, as opposed to McCarthy who uses The Narrator to show the initial success at overcoming trauma when there is no choice to repress the memories or not due to a case of amnesia. The Narrator uses a series of re-enactments in order to try to become more flaccid, due to the loss of memory and need to relearn every movement he makes caused by the traumatic event that he experiences.
Amnesia affects the memory. People diagnosed with amnesia lose memories that occur before the onset of amnesia. Amnesia affects the memory, how well you can store long term memory. If amnesia occurs, one might have trouble with long term memory in the future, or simply forget most of their past. Due to the brains plasticity, the brain can use association areas to help build memory. Amnesia commonly comes in two forms that occur together: Retrograde amnesia and Anterograde amnesia.
Anterograde Amnesia (AA) is commonly known as short term memory loss. It is the inability to form any new memories after a neurological or psychological trauma in the brain. “Current definitions of anterograde amnesia emphasize the presence of severe and permanent deficits for the recall of recent events (typically with poor recognition) that contrast with intact short-term memory, IQ, semantic memory, skill learning, simple classical conditioning, perceptual learning, and priming” (Aggleton, 2008, p. 1442). Also, according to Aggleton, AA causes the inability to recall autobiographical events (episodic memory). Research shows that damage to the diencephalon or frontal lobe can cause AA. Damage to the diencephalon impairs memory performance because it encodes new experiences for future recall and damage to the frontal lobe of the brain weaken memory performance because the it is involved in regulates access explicit memory (Mendev 2007). Duff, Wszalek, Tranel & Cohen (2008) stated...
For example, a study was done by, Cunningham, (2007), he believed that brain implicit attitudes operates through our unconscious emotion and that because the presentation of subliminal black faces activated our amygdala rather than white faces. The amygdala is known for its negative, and fearful sensitive, now it is also known for positive information after suffering from brain injury. Cunningham, (2007), have demonstrated that the amygdala depending on the perceiver might respond differently with processing affective intensity as opposed to various valence which cause the brain injury person to respond differently. Brain lesions have been linked by researchers and also brain lesions are related to cognitive deficits. The imagery of brain lesions were study in patients. The patient underwent surgery that served their right hemisphere from their left hemisphere. According to, (Sternberg, 2009), the right hemisphere appeared to represent visuospatial knowledge, whereas, the left hemisphere geared move toward symbol based knowledge. Moreover, the right hemisphere also represent being connected to the analogous to our physical environment as well. Nonetheless, the left hemisphere associates imaginal components along with symbols and to collect entirely new information entirely after undergoing brain
Making and storing memories is a complex process involving many regions of the brain. (3). Most experts agree that we have two stages of memories - short-term memory and long-term memory. Short-term memory is the immediate memory we have when we first hear or perceive someth...
His overall condition in the episodic memory system is quite grim. Matlin and Farmer (2016) discuss episodic memory as memories of one’s own life experiences as opposed to semantic memories which mainly refer to memories of a factual nature (Matlin, 2016, p. 145). Mr. Wearing does not retain many memories of life experience at all, even from times before his illness. For example, he does remember and recognize his wife. He feels great love for her. But the film states that he has no memory of their wedding, even though it occurred almost two years before his illness. He also seems to remember his
Henry Molaison or known as HM contributes to the deep understanding of memory by previous scientists and until now. His case had been a huge research and discussions among the well known scientists during his time and these results in the study of memories. Henry Molaison is living with a severe epilepsy where he need to undergo a surgery as medications were no longer gave him effects for his disease. So, his surgeon William Beecher Scoville suction out both of his hippocampus and when he got recovered from the surgery, his doctor realised that, Henry was having amnesia and seek him for another doctor. What confusing the doctors is that, even though the surgery was a success where Henry seizures decreasing; he is now facing dense memory loss. Then, once it was realized that the hippocampus plays a crucial roles for memory; the surgery of removing hippocampus was then banned for all and this brings to deep study of memory and hippocampus.
The memory of a beautiful day at the beach goes back to a general and fuzzy feeling; however, a strong argument or an accident is remembered as detailed and specific. It seems that especially traumatic memories are captured by two separate parts of the brain. People unable to consolidate long-term memories, however, may have memories of traumatic events if the amygdala is
Learning to tie shoes and ride a bike requires the encoding, storing, and retrieving of past observations of the procedure. With a lot of practice, children master these skills so well that they are able to remember them the rest of their lives. Memory is the storing of information over time. It is one of the most important concepts in learning; if things are not remembered, no learning can take place. As a process, memory refers to the "dynamic mechanism associated with the retention and retrieval of information about past experiences" (Sternberg 260). We use our memory about the past to help us understand the present. The study or memory in psychology is used in different ways, as well as there are many different ways to study how memory works in humans. In psychology there are many tasks used to measure memory, and different types of memory storages that human's use, such as sensory storing, or short term storing. There are also a lot of techniques that humans use to improve their memory, which they can use to learn, such as mnemonic devices. All these things can be classified as important issues in the study of human memory and ways of learning.