Memory Disorders - Memory and Amnesia - Lecture Slides, Slides of Human Memory

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PSY 335

Memory and Amnesia

Memory Disorders

Midterm Results

Score Grade N 51 - 60 A 4 45 - 50 B 13 39 - 44 C 13 33 - 38 D 7 0 - 32 F 3 Top score = 59, Top score for curve-setting = 57

Kinds of Memory Disorders

 Organic – having a physical cause

 Functional – having a psychological cause

 Dys (as a prefix) means difficulty or limited ability to perform.

 A (as a prefix) means complete inability or lack of a function.

Alcohol & Memory

 Alcoholic amnesia – alcohol prevents consolidation so nothing is remembered and no memory can be recovered.

 Alcoholic blackout – state-dependent memory, so recall is possible if one is back in the same state.

 Because many crimes are committed while drunk, memory failure is frequently blamed on alcohol.

Sources of Organic Dysfunction

 Accident

• Car accidents and other injuries (e.g., N.A.)
• War

 Disease

• Encephalitis (viral) – inflammation of the lining of the brain, causing swelling.
• Stroke
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Korsakov’s syndrome (prolonged alcoholism)

Alzheimer’s Disease

 A fatal degenerative disease caused by cell failure – neurofibrillary tangles and plaques that interfere with cell function.

• All areas of the brain are eventually affected, but frontal lobes and memory go first.

 Confusions and memory problems do not resemble normal aging, amnesia or other memory problems.

Classification of Disorders

 See Parkin, Ch 5, for tests used to assess memory problems.

 Disorders classified by type of symptom:

• Generalizing – confusion, fuzziness, mental slowing.
• Localizing – few generalizing symptoms but impairment of specific functions.

 Clusters of symptoms are a syndrome.

• Concern about symptoms is a symptom itself.

Frontal Lobe Deficits

 Confabulation – production of a false memory.

• Momentary confabulation – responses that could be correct.
• Fantastic confabulation – responses clearly fictional.

 Source amnesia – fact is remembered but not the source.

 Memory of temporal order.

Frontal Lobe Deficits (Cont.)

 Faulty encoding and poor representation may be a cause of poorly focused search.

• Information is needed to guide search.

 The left frontal lobe guides encoding.

 The right frontal lobe guides retrieval.

Frontal Lobe Deficits (Cont.)

 Emotional deficits:

• Cognitive apathy, lack of motivation
• Flattened affect

 Impaired awareness of memory loss:

• Inaccurate assessment of performance
• Lack of distress

 If confabulations are believed by others, no feedback on normalcy.

Peter Sellars in “Dr. Strangelove: or How I learned to story worrying and love the bomb”

Damage to the Parietal

Association Cortex

 Confusion about directions, inability to use words describing spatial relations:

• Under, up, down  Inability to name body parts or point to parts of the body.

 Capgras syndrome (rt. Posterior parietal) inability to recognize close family members

• Sometimes animals or even furniture
• Invasion of the body snatchers

Pure Word Deafness

 A person can hear and speak, read and write normally but cannot understand speech.

 Occurs with bilateral destruction of the auditory cortex or disconnection from Wernicke’s area.

 Because Wernicke’s area is not damaged, speech produced is OK.

Perceptual Deficits

 Aphasia – involves inability to name something.

 Agnosia – involves inability to recognize something.

 Visual agnosias – inability to combine individual visual impressions into complete patterns.