Retrieval, Forgetting, and Memory Construction

Emotions, Stress, and Memory: Flashbulb and PTSD

• Glucose• Proteins

• What type of scan would we best be able to see these types of neural transmissions if glucose is involved?

• How do the amygdala, hippocampus, cerebellum interact with stress?• Reliable vs. unreliable

memories?

Neuron Review

• Increased synaptic efficiency makes for more efficient neural circuits

Memory is Synaptic Change

•New memories = physiological changes in the brain

•making networks easier to fire by adjusting the dendrite/neurotransmitters system.•The easier to fire, the easier linked memories or

concepts are to remember. • Illustrate?

Physical Basis for Memory: LTP

•This stored ability for a circuit to fire is called: Long Term Potentiation (LTP)

•Thru LTP, the stimulating circuits have increased levels of sensitivity•Meaning: the sending neuron needs less

prompting to send the transmission• Where does this take place on the neuron?• Can you illustrate it?

Neurological Basis for memory

• Lack of neural connections explains Infantile Amnesia: the inability to remember episodic memories before age 3. • you can, however, remember implicit: skill memory• Where is that located in the brain? What does that lead us to

believe about brain development?

Memory Retrieval

•To retrieve a memory you must first have some kind of retrieval cue

• Examples?

Retrieval

•Activating one strand of a schematic memory = priming.• Mnemonic devices encoding and mnemonic retrieval – What’s the

difference?

• What is a schema?

Forgetting as Retrieval error.

•If we cannot remember something, it could be that:• never encoded• difficulty retrieving it•Interference of other memories are common retrieval errors.

Interference Theory =

• Proactive

• Old

• Retroactive

• New

•pro= ahead, someone shooting an arrow out ahead and it kills all the stuff up front

•Retro = rocket, the after-burn kills all the stuff behind it

Forgetting as Retrieval error.

• Proactive interference:

•You studied French for three years and then decided to take Spanish in college. You may find yourself retrieving French words or pronouncing Spanish words with a French accent.

Forgetting as Retrieval error

• Retroactive Interference:

•Say you’ve been driving for a while and then decide to learn a stick shift. Then when you start driving an automatic, you slam on the break with your left foot thinking it is a clutch.

Interference vs. No interference

Daniel Schacter’s Sins of Memory• Three sins of forgetting• Absent-mindedness – Where did I place my wallet?• Transience – What’s the capital of Ghana? (from 8th grade)• Blocking – tip of the tongue

• Three sins of distortion• Misattribution – I thought you were the one that told me that• Suggestibility – leading the witness • Bias – current feelings may color recalled initial feelings

• One sin of intrusion• Persistence – unwanted memories stick around

Review: Ebbinghaus’s Forgetting Curve

Retention? Conclusions for Studying?

Jill Price: The Woman Who Could Not Forget•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoxsMMV538U

•The Real Rain Man•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2T45r5G3kA

BREAK

Prospective vs. Retrospective MEMORY

Memory Construction is like a mosaic

• Our memories are what we encode as well as how we retrieve them.

• Remember we encode information semantically and may fill in the blanks with details that aren’t correct, or color the memory by the mood we are in.

Memory Construction: like a mosaic

•Déjà vu caused by firing of network by a cue that makes you believe you’ve experienced the whole picture before• recall vs. recognition

Tip of Tongue

• Problem of retrieval

Retrieval

•Context effect: Putting yourself back into the context where a memory was formed may trigger that memory.

• Going by an old house, a smell of perfume from a former girlfriend, or the smell of autumn football, may bring back a flood of memories.

Retrieval

•State dependent memory: state we are currently in influences the memories that are retrieved.

•When sad, happy, drunk whatever, these become a retrieval cue.

•Mood Congruence: •when sad, we are likely to remember/paint events as being sadder than we thought at the time or happier if happy.

Source Amnesia

•Attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard, read about, or imagined

• if you believe you have a memory before the age of 3… odds are you just saw a picture or a video of you at that age and created a memory about it

• Child studies• Piaget?• Neuro brain development?

Misinformation Effect

•Similarly, we can encode a false memory if we are led to believe something occurred that didn’t. • That memory will become just as real as memory of an

event that actually occurred.

•We also fill in the gaps when retrieving memories• retrieval cues offered can change the memory as it comes

out. • Retrieval activity

Eyewitness Memory

•Because of source amnesia and misinformation effect, eyewitness memories are notoriously bad.

Elizabeth Loftus: Eyewitness

•Faculty recall confabulation•Lost in the mall experiment

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcywPdORySA

Repression or Motivated Forgetting

• People seem to purposefully forget things (motivated forgetting), but many repressed memories that are recovered seem to been planted, usually unknowingly.

• What do you believe?

Amnesia

• Retrograde amnesia – unable to recall before amnesia (cases amnesia)• Damage to areas associated with declarative memories• Tumors, strokes, hypoxia, damage to prefrontal cortex

• Anterograde amnesia – unable to recall after trauma• Concussion, car crash, ECT• Usually happens in hippocampus

• Infantile amnesia• Source amnesia• Alzheimers• Clive Wearing:• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmkiMlvLKto