L2 Neuropsychology

• Jeremy Tree: '"He is still convinced that he has just woken up. He lives in a desolate eternal present. He cannot enjoy books because he cannot follow their plot, and takes no interest in current affairs because they are meaningless as he does not remember their context."'
• Types of memory


  • Episodic
  • Semantic
  • Procedural/Implicit
  • Prospective

  
• Episodic memory


  For things that have happened
• Jeremy Tree: '"He is still convinced that he has just woken up. He lives in a desolate eternal present. He cannot enjoy books because he cannot follow their plot, and takes no interest in current affairs because they are meaningless as he does not remember their context."'
• Semantic memory


  For facts (Mental Lexicon)
• Procedural/Implicit memory


  For skills
• Prospective memory


  For planning future events and actions
• Forms of information stored

  • Visual
  • Olfactory
  • Gustatory
  • Kinaesthetic
• Interestingly some senses can generate quite 'vivid' episodic recollections – perhaps links to 'emotional' neural circuits
• Types of memory


  • Episodic
  • Semantic
  • Procedural/Implicit
  • Prospective

  
• Time periods of memory

  • Short Term/Immediate/Working
  • Long Term
  • Delayed
  • Recent
  • Remote
  • Prospective

  
• Episodic memory


  For things that have happened
• Short Term/Immediate/Working Memory


  Stores information from the past few seconds
• Semantic memory


  For facts (Mental Lexicon)
• Long Term Memory


  Stores information for the long term (e.g. my phone number)

  
• Procedural/Implicit memory


  For skills

  
• Delayed memory


  For the past few minutes
• Prospective memory


  For planning future events and actions
• Recent memory


  For the past few days/weeks
• Forms of information stored

  • Visual
  • Olfactory
  • Gustatory
  • Kinaesthetic
• Remote memory


  Collected over several months/years
• Interestingly some senses can generate quite 'vivid' episodic recollections – perhaps links to 'emotional' neural circuits
• Prospective memory


  What I intend to do in the future
• Time periods of memory

  • Short Term/Immediate/Working
  • Long Term
  • Delayed
  • Recent
  • Remote
  • Prospective
• Memory processes


  • Episodic
  • Semantic
  • Procedural

  
• Short Term/Immediate/Working Memory


  Stores information from the past few seconds
• Procedural memory


  • The kinds of cognitive skills that are 'automatic' in nature (e.g., touch typing)
  • Supplementary motor area, basal ganglia, cerebellum are involved
  • Impaired in Parkinson's disease and other basal ganglia conditions, unlike classical amnesia
• Long Term Memory


  Stores information for the long term (e.g. my phone number)
• Explicit memory function can become impaired in amnesia, but procedural memory remains intact and can be used in therapy (e.g., AD patient "learning by doing", repeatedly led to location of toilet in hospital)

  
• Atkinson and Shiffrin's Modal Model

  Assumes multiple memory structures: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory. Information flows bidirectionally between these structures.

  
• Delayed memory


  For the past few minutes
• Classifications of amnesia


  • Psychogenic (selective, fugue, multiple personalities)
  • Organic (transient, permanent, degenerative, stable, material specific, global)
• Recent memory


  For the past few days/weeks
• Retrograde amnesia


  Loss of access to events that happened in the past, prior to a trauma
• Remote memory


  Collected over several months/years
• Anterograde amnesia


  A deficit encoding, storing, or retrieving new events occurring after a trauma
• Prospective memory


  What I intend to do in the future
• Memory processes


  • Episodic
  • Semantic
  • Procedural

  
• Features of the amnesic syndrome

  • Normal short-term memory performance
  • Normal general intellectual performance
  • Normal procedural memory performance
  • Dense anterograde amnesia
  • Variable retrograde amnesia
  • Near normal performance on measures of implicit memory
  • Impaired performance on measures of explicit memory

  
• Procedural memory

  • The kinds of cognitive skills that are 'automatic' in nature (e.g., touch typing)
  • Supplementary motor area, basal ganglia, cerebellum are involved
  • Impaired in Parkinson's disease and other basal ganglia conditions, unlike classical amnesia