Introduction to Psychology:Memory

Cleoputri Yusainy, PhD

Memory and the “self”

“If who we are is shaped by what we remember, and if memory is a

function of the brain, then synapses are the fundamental

units of the self” (LeDoux, 2002).http://www.apa.org/monitor/nov02/synaptic.aspx

Computer analogy for human’s memory

Trust your memory?

Memory is an active system that receives information from the senses, organises and alters it as it stores it away, and then retrieve the information from the storage.

Why do people: Forget things that had happened? Remember things that did not happen,

or remember them differently from the way they really were?

Primacy vs. recency effect

Primacy effect: Characteristic of memory in which recall is particularly good for first two or three items in list.

Recency effect: Characteristic of memory in which recall is particularly good for the last few items in list.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Improves Memory http://youtu.be/xLiHRG9l9W4

Atkinson-Shiffrin three-stage model of memory

Déjà vu (already seen) is thought to happen when the information we take in from our surroundings "leak out" and

incorrectly shortcut its way from STM to LTM, bypassing typical storage transfer mechanisms http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-

babble/201208/the-neuroscience-d-j-vu

LTM, learning, and emotion

reward centre

sensory information, memory, and learning

centre for emotions, emotional behavior, and motivation

long-term memory

LTM, sleep, and dream

Dreams generally occur in the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.

“Dreams reflect a biological process of LTM consolidation, serving to strengthen the neural traces of recent events, to integrate these new traces with older memories and previously stored knowledge, and to maintain the stability of existing memory representations in the face of subsequent experience.” http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/11/6/671.full

Types of LTM

1. Explicit (declarative) memory (facts): LTM of factual knowledge and personal experiences.

a. Semantic memory: Impersonal facts and everyday knowledge.

b. Episodic memory: Personal experiences linked with specific times and places.

2. Implicit (procedural) memory (skills): LTM of conditioned responses and learned skills, e.g., driving.

HM, the man with no memory

What happens when you remove the hippocampus? http://youtu.be/KkaXNvzE4pk

Loss of memory

Anterograde amnesia: Inability to form new explicit LTM for events following brain trauma or surgery. Explicit memories formed before (and STM) are left intact.

Retrograde amnesia: Disruption of LTM for the past, especially episodic memory.

Infantile/child amnesia: Inability as adults to remember events that occurred before 3 y.o. age.

Why we forget

A plastic nervous system requires the ability not only to acquire and store but also to forget. http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(14)00148-2

The fiction of memory

Elizabeth Loftus: The fiction of memory http://youtu.be/PB2OegI6wvI

Our tendency to create false memories could be related to our ability to learn rules http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140924113039.htm