Memory Disorders

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Memory Disorders

• Psychology 3717

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Introduction

• The strange case of Charles DSousa
• Or is it Philip Cutajar?
• Rare type of disorder
• Some stuff clearly spared

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Introduction

• Results with amnesiacs has lead to many
  discoveries about memory
• Episodic vs. semantic memory
• Procedural vs. declarative memory
• Implicit vs. explicit memory
• Phonological loop vs. visuo spatial sketchpad

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problems

• Taxonomy
• Individual differences
• Interpretation
• Application
• Mostly comes down to a lack of control, which of
  course is inevitable

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Case studies

• We pretty much have to rely on these
• They are, thankfully, rare
• Usually some sort of accident or a stroke

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Case SP

• Stroke patient
• Both Medial temporal lobes, left Hp and lots of
  surrounding area, but not the amygdala
• Had trouble naming objects
• Anterograde and retrograde amnesia
• Similar to KC

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Clive Wearing

• Case of encephalitis
• Pervasive amnesia
• Both semantic and episodic impairment
• Temporal lobe dilation
• Hp destroyed

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Performance Patterns

• Retrograde amnesia
• Losing past memories
• Anterograde amnesia
• No new memories
• Spared function
• Often implicit tasks, such as priming or ability
  to learn a new skill

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Typically spared

• Working Memory
• Semantic memory
• Even KC could learn new stuff
• Declarative information using Tulvings method
• Restrict errors

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Why?

• Difficulties in interference, retrieval and
  encoding
• Consolidation
• Tends to come down to something to do with HP
• Context or sending item off for processing or
  some such thing

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Semantic memory problems

• What is a cat?
• Temporal lobe problems
• Oddly enough, episodic memory often intact in
  these rare cases

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Working Memory Problems

• There are cases of people with intact
  phonological loops and visuo spatial sketchpads
  that are pretty much toast
• And vice versa

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Alzheimers

• More than half of all dementia is from AD
• 2 times more women than men
• Could be because women live longer though
• dementia and brain stuff
• Neurofibrillary tangles and neuritic plaques

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AD

• MASSIVE cell death
• In essence, you get like lesions everywhere
• cortical dementia, but you get these lesions,
  holes really, everywhere

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Neurotransmitters affected

• ACh is important in memory, especially in HP
• The ACh system is severely damaged in AD
• Indeed it is almost targeted
• Other systems too though

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Memory effects

• Episodic effects
• Eventually semantic effects
• Retrieval cues dont help
• Information was not even encoded
• Nondeclarative stuff, skills etc, are the last to
  go

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Treatment

• Most drugs target the cholinergic system
• This disease not only affects the victim, but
  also his/her family
• NGF is promising
• Treatments will come, but, reversal, I dunno
• Respite care is key for the family

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Conclusions

• Frankly there is not a great deal of hope for
  most amnesiacs
• That said, neuroscience is moving pretty fast
• Has helped us understand normal function