What does the Hippocampus Do?
• Place cells neurons that respond when you are in a
specific place, in the place field of the neuron. So a
place cell would fire when you are in your bedroom
or house, etc. Each hippocampal neuron has a place
field in many different environments. At first when
you put the rat in the new environment, no neurons
fire. Then as the rat becomes familiar with the room,
neurons fire for particular parts of the room.
What does the Hippocampus Do?
• Configural Association Theory The theory that the hippocampus retains the interrelation among cues, spatially and temporally. So it remembers the relationship between a visual cue and a location as signaling food.
• Path Integration Theory the hippocampus
calculates current location, past location, and
future location from one’s own movement.
The Amygdal: Fear
and Memory
Amygdala
• • The amygdala modulates the formation of memories in other brain structures, such as the hippocampus.
Information or events of particular emotional /
motivational significance are better remembered than those of little importance (c.f. flashbulb memory).
• Lesions in humans and primates reveal a role for the
amygdala in the perception of emotional cues and the
generation of emotional responses, particularly those
associated with negative emotions such as fear.
Amygdala
• • Amygdala lesions before retention testing
disrupt conditioned fear. Hence, the amygdala may be the site of storage of fear memories.
• Temporary inactivation by drugs during
acquisition has the same effect, suggesting a
genuine role in memory encoding.
The Chowchilla Kidnapping
Officials unearth the underground Livermore dungeon in which 26
schoolchildren and their bus driver were held captive in 1976.
Credit: James Palmer / Associated Press 1976
•
Flashbulb Memory
• The number of details remembered about September 11 and the everyday event were statistically indistinguishable. Most memories were consistent, and over time, the number of consistent details participants were able to recall did decline, but there was no difference in the decline for ordinary memories and for memories of September 11. The number of inconsistent details (e.g. "I was with Fred" changing to "I was with Mary") increased similarly for both ordinary events and September 11.
Flashbulb Memory
• What was different was the confidence and vividness of the memories: Participants were more likely to believe their memories of September 11 were accurate than their ordinary memories, and they reported those memories as being equally vivid, even months after the event. Meanwhile, they reported the ordinary memories
becoming less and less vivid and reliable, even though objectively they could remember no more details about September 11.
Recall for Details During Hurricanes
Terms
• Encoding
• Storage
• Retrieval
• Organizationa l encoding / chunking
• Sensory memory
• Iconic mem.
• Echoic memory
• Short-term memory
• Long-term memory
• Prospective memory
• Tip-of-the- tongue
• Memory
misattribution
• Source memory
• False
recognition
• Bias
• Suggestibility
• Flashbulb mem.
• Transfer- appropriate
• Explicit memory
• Procedural mem.
• Implcit mem.
• Semantic mem.
• Priming
• Episodic
• Transience
• Retroactive interference
• Proactive interference
• Rehearsal
• Working memory
• Long-term memory
• Anterograde amnesia
• Retrograde amnesia
• NMDA receptor
• Retrieval cue
• State-
depenedent mem.
The End of Memory
Back-Up Slides
Forensics and Memory: False Confessions
Forensics and Memory: False Confessions
Forensics and Memory: Brief Overview of Criminal Justice System
• 74% of crimes do not result in arrest
• 76% of charges are dropped or juvenile
• 22% of charges go to trial
• Only about 14 of 1000 crimes committed will
actually go to trial – criminal or civil
Concepts to know
• Interference:
Proactive vs. Retroactive
1 2 1 2
• Explicitness:
Explicit vs. Implicit
Bla
Concepts to know
• Encoding specificity
• Modal model of memory:
Sensory memory Short term memory Long term memory
Information Response
Storage
Retrieval
-Context effect -State dependent learning
Concepts to know
• Working memory = structured STM
Phonological loop
Visuospatial sketchpad
Central executive
LTM
Declarative Procedural
Episodic Semantic
• Memory structure
Implicit Explicit
Knowing Vivid Recall
Knowing that... Knowing how to...
Varieties of Memory: Declarative
• “What” memory
– What happened, when it happened, that it happened.
• Episodic: events, “when and where”
– Re-experiencing, autobiographical
– Easier to acquire, may suffer from “multiple exposures”
• Semantic: knowledge, facts
– Not autobiographical
– Multiple exposures needed to acquire and strengthen knowledge
– May misattribute knowledge!
Varieties of memory: Procedural
– Consist of procedural and motor memory – “How” memory
• How to do things, procedures used
• Examples: how to ride a bike, how to tie your shoes, how to drive to school/work
– Motor memory
• Consists of actions/muscle use
• Riding a bike!, a dance performance,
Caption: Results of Talarico and Rubin’s (2003) flashbulb memory experiment. (a) The decrease in the number of details remembered was similar for memories of 9/11 and for memories of an
everyday event. (b) Participants’ belief that their memory was accurate remained high for 9/11, but decreased for memories of the everyday event. (Extracted from “Consistency and Key properties of Flashbulb and Everyday Memories,” by J. M. Talarico & D. C. Rubin, Psychological Science, 14, 5, Fig. 1. Copyright © 2003 with permission from the American Psychological Society.
Caption: What happens at a synapse as (a) a stimulus is first presented. The record next to the electrode indicates the rate of firing in the axon of neuron B. (b) As the stimulus is repeated structural changes are beginning to occur. (c) After many repetitions, more
complex connections have developed between the two neurons, which causes an increase in the firing rate, even though the stimulus is the same on that was presented in (a).
Caption: Results of Warrington and
Weiskrantz’s (1968) experiment.
Caption: Results of Stanny and Johnson’s (2000) weapons-focus
experiment. Presence of a weapon that was fired is associated with a decrease in memory about the perpetrator, the victim, and the weapon.