Identify key brain structures critical to memory function and give some of the evidence supporting their involvement

Brain Structures Critical to Memory Function

  • Temporal love
  • Medial temporal lobe
  • Perirhinal cortex – receives information about specific items
  • Parahippocampal cortex – receives information about context
  • Hippocampus – critical for new episodic and semantic memories, not for procedural learning

Amnesia

  • Retrograde amnesia – forget pass events
  • Anterograde amnesia – problems learning new things

Define these following “types” of memory and explain how they are (or are not!) related to each other: declarative and non-declarative; semantic and episodic; procedural; autobiographical; prospective

Declarative Memory

  • Semantic – multiple experiences
  • Episodic – one experience

Non-Declarative Memory

  • Procedural
  • Perceptual Representation
    • Priming, motor skills, perception

Explain what is meant by the “structure” of long term memory and describe the following models of the organisation of semantic memory: Category theoriesClassical/defining features categorisation; prototype and exemplar theories; Barslaou’s embodied approach; hub and spoke model of concepts; schemas and scripts; hierarchies of concepts

  • Classical categories – assumption that categories can be defined by rules  Hierarchies of concepts – subordinate, basic, superordinate – Concept – mental representation of a category  Prototypes
    • Concepts have prototype structure – collection of characteristic attributes or an exemplar
    • Knowledge is more statistical than logical
    • Category membership is graded, and boundaries are fuzzy
    • Category membership is determined by similarity to prototype
  • Semantic memory
    • Classical representations of concepts:
      • Abstract in nature and distinct form input and output processes o Stable
      • Consistent across different people

Describe the following phenomena and explain what they imply about cognitive processes: Repetition priming; conceptual/semantic priming; procedural learning