Brain Areas Involved in Different Types of Memory: Hippocampus and Basal Ganglia, Summaries of Medicine

Download Brain Areas Involved in Different Types of Memory: Hippocampus and Basal Ganglia and more Summaries Medicine in PDF only on Docsity!

Brain Areas involved in Different Types

of Memory

Jeanette J. Norden, Ph.D. Professor Emerita Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

REVIEW ( ☺ )

• Different areas of the brain control different

functions; thus, damage to a given area causes

a specific loss of function

REVIEW ( ☺ )

• Neurons are the fundamental cell of the

nervous system; neurons communicate with

each other at synapses ; communication is

“electro-chemical”

INPUT

OUTPUT

Memory

• There are many different types of memory
• Specific cortical (both old and new) and non-cortical areas process different types of memory – or different aspects of memory
• Learning and memory occur over time and involve many different individual events, for example attending, encoding (learning), and retrieving (the memory)
• All memory involves changes occurring as a result of experience (learning) that allow the organism to alter future behavior based on past experience
• Memory is not a snapshot of an event, but an electrically encoded representation
• Memory fails us in ways that tell us something about what it is and is not

Implicit or Non-Declarative Memory

• Memory for skills, habits and behaviors
• Operates without conscious awareness once learned
• Requires repetition and practice
• Less likely to be forgotten once learned
• Allows many types of behavior to be on “auto-pilot”

Many different brain areas play a role in implicit memory

• For example, nuclei deep in the hemisphere called the basal ganglia are involved in “motor” programs
• The cerebellum (“little cerebrum”) plays a critical role in the timing and execution of learned, skilled motor movement

Explicit or Declarative Memory

• Memory of “facts” or “events”; also “spatial” memory
• Can be consciously recalled
• Easy to acquire, easy to forget

Many areas of the brain play a role in Explicit Memory (even more than shown below)

Our focus will be on these 2 areas

Plays a role in “emotional” memory

The hippocampus is an “old” cortical area involved in multiple aspects of memory

• The LEFT hippocampus is more involved in the learning & memory of “facts”,“episodes”,“words”; it is also responsible for constructing – from episodic memory – an “autobiography”
• The RIGHT hippocampus is more involved in “spatial” memory
• The hippocampus compares the present experience with past experience; processing through the hippocampus is necessary for learning and for memory consolidation to occur

Memory involves changes at the cellular and molecular levels – for example, synapses can become more “efficacious”

Or New Synapses can be made as the result of Experience