Neuropsychology learning and memory

Cognitive Psychology
-Arpana Sharma
M Sc, MBA, MA, PDCR
ArpanAryan Institutions Pvt Ltd

NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS OF LEARNING
AND MEMORY
• Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology that is concerned with
how the brain and the rest of the nervous system influence a person's
cognition and behaviors.
• It is both an experimental and clinical field of psychology that aims to
understand how behavior and cognition are influenced by brain
functioning and is concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of
behavioral and cognitive effects of neurological disorders

Learning and Memory
Learning Memory
Learning is the acquisition of skill or knowledge Memory is the expression of what you’ve acquired
Generally slow process Faster process
May involve practical application May not involve practical application

Learning and Memory cont..
• Learning and memory can be subdivided into major hypothetical
stages:
• Encoding
• Acquisition
• Consolidation
• Storage
• Retrieval

Memory Processes

Encoding
Transformation of information so the nervous system can process it.
Memory Encoding is the crucial first step to create a new memory.
It allows the perceived item of interest to be converted into
a construct that can be stored within the brain, and then recalled later
from short-term or long-term memory.

Types of encoding
1. Visual encoding: Process of encoding images and visual sensory information
E.g.: Remembering a specific word among list of words you go through
2. Elaborative encoding: Process of actively relating new information to knowledge that is
already in memory.
E.g.: Remembering the name of a person you meet for the first time
3. Semantic encoding: processing and encoding of sensory input that has particular
meaning or can be applied to a context.
E.g.: Relating food with a specific colour
4. Acoustic encoding: Encoding of auditory impulses
E.g.: Music
5. Tactile encoding: Processing and encoding of how something feels, normally through
touch.
E.g.: Examination, where the sense of touch is vital.

Storage
• Second stage of memory
• Retaining of information
• Two distinct types of memory storage:
• short-term memory : is the capacity for holding, but not
manipulating, a small amount of information in mind in an active,
readily available state for a short period of time.
• long-term memory: is the capacity for holding information for a long
period of time.

Types of long time memory
• Implicit memory: refers to the use of objects or movements of the body,
such as how exactly to use a pencil, drive a car, or ride a bicycle.
• Explicit memory/Declarative memory: refers to all memories that are
consciously available
• Further division of Explicit memory are
• Episodic memory: memory for specific events in time,
• Semantic memory :refers to knowledge about factual information, such as the meaning
of words
• Autobiographical memory: refers to knowledge about events and personal experiences
from an individual's own life

Memory Retrieval
It is the process of remembering information stored in long-term
memory.
The cognitive process of bringing stored information into consciousness

Human Memory, Brain Damage and Amnesia
Deficits in memory as a function of brain damage, disease, or psychological trauma
are known as amnesia. Amnesia refers to the loss of memories, such as facts,
information and experiences. Though forgetting your identity is a common plot
device in movies and television, that's not generally the case in real-life amnesia.
Instead, people with amnesia — also called amnestic syndrome — usually know
who they are. But, they may have trouble learning new information and forming
new memories.
Amnesia can be caused by damage to areas of the brain that are vital for memory
processing. Unlike a temporary episode of memory loss (transient global amnesia),
amnesia can be permanent.
There's no specific treatment for amnesia, but techniques for enhancing memory
and psychological support can help people with amnesia and their families cope

cont..
• Symptoms
The two main features of amnesia are:
Difficulty learning new information following the onset of amnesia
(anterograde amnesia)
Difficulty remembering past events and previously familiar
information (retrograde amnesia)
• Additional symptoms
• False memory
• confusion

cont..
• Causes
• Genetic – Dementia, Alzheimer's disease
• Environmental – Chemicals, Pollutants, Trauma,
• Biological
• Stroke
• Brain inflammation
• Long term alcohol consumption
• Tumors
• Degenerative brain disorders
• Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (WKS) is a
neurological disorder. Wernicke's encephalopathy and Korsakoff's psychosis are the
acute and chronic phases, respectively, of the same disease. WKS is caused by a
deficiency in the B vitamin thiamine. Thiamine plays a role in metabolizing glucose to
produce energy for the brain
• Benzodiazepines or other medications that act as sedatives

Brain Surgery and Memory Loss
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, surgeons attempted to treat
neurological and psychiatric disease using a variety of neurosurgical
procedures.

Prefrontal Lobotomy- Removing or disconnecting
the prefrontal lobe – for mental disorders

Corpus callosotomy - surgically sectioning the
corpus callosum) – Epilepsy

Amygdalotomy - removing the amygdala -
treatment for severe aggressive behavior

Procedural Memory Encoding and Retrieval
Scott Grafton, Eliot Hazeltine, and Ivry (1995) investigated the brain basis of
procedural motor learning in normal subjects. They compared conditions in
which the subjects learned motor sequences implicitly during dual-task
conditions, which helped to prevent subjects from explicitly noticing and
learning the sequence.
PET conducted during the dual-task condition demonstrated activation of
the motor cortex and the supplementary motor area of the left
hemisphere, and the putamen in the basal ganglia bilaterally. Also activated
were the rostral prefrontal cortex and parietal cortex. Therefore, when
subjects were implicitly learning the task, brain areas that control limb
movements were activated. When the distracting auditory task was
removed, the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, right pre motor cortex,
right putamen, and parieto-occipital cortex were activated bilaterally.

Temporal lobe resection -of the temporal
lobe - Lower the number of seizures

Brain structure

Parts of Brain

MEMORY CONSOLIDATION AND
HIPPOCAMPUS
• The hippocampus is a major component of the brain of humans and
other vertebrates. Humans and other mammals have two
hippocampi, one in each side of the brain. The hippocampus is part of
the limbic system, and plays important roles in the consolidation of
information from short-term memory to long-term memory, and
in spatial memory that enables navigation.

Alcoholic Korsakoff’s Syndrome and
Diencephalic Amnesia
• Korsakoff syndrome is an amnestic disorder caused by thiamine
(vitamin B1) deficiency associated with prolonged ingestion
of alcohol.
• Diencephalic Amnesia is a form of amnesia resulting from loss of
neurons in the diencephalon, especially the midline thalamus and the
mammillary bodies of the hypothalamus.

ANTERIOR AND LATERAL TEMPORAL
LOBES AND MEMORY
The temporal lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in
the brain of mammals.
The temporal lobe is involved in processing sensory input into derived
meanings for the appropriate retention of visual memory, language
comprehension, and emotion association.
The temporal lobe consists of structures that are vital for declarative or
long-term memory.
Some patients with dense retrograde amnesia might still form new long-
term memories. This type of amnesia is called isolated retrograde amnesia

ANIMAL MODELS OF MEMORY
• In knowing the role played by the medial temporal lobe to primate
memory systems, monkeys with lesions to the hippocampus and
surrounding cortex have been very helpful. The relations between
specific memory and brain structures are being revealed with such
models.
• For instance, it has been found that amygdala plays a role in emotion
and emotional memories but not in episodic memory system

ANIMAL MODELS OF MEMORY cont..
Brain sizes of hominids
Name Brain size (cm3)
Homo habilis 550–687
Homo ergaster 700–900
Homo erectus 600–1250
Homo heidelbergensis 1100–1400
Homo neanderthalensis 1200–1750
Homo sapiens 1400

IMAGING THE HUMAN BRAIN AND MEMORY
• A positron emission tomography (PET) scan is an imaging test that
helps reveal how your tissues and organs are functioning.
• A PET scan uses a radioactive drug (tracer) to show
this activity. This scan can sometimes detect disease
before it shows up on other imaging tests.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) cont..
• The tracer may be injected, swallowed or inhaled, depending on
which organ or tissue is being studied. The tracer collects in areas of
your body that have higher levels of chemical activity, which often
correspond to areas of disease. On a PET scan, these areas show up
as bright spots.
• A PET scan is useful in revealing or evaluating several conditions,
including many cancers, heart disease and brain disorders. Often, PET
images are combined with CT or MRI scans to create special views.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique
used in radiology to form pictures of the anatomy and the
physiological processes of the body. MRI scanners use
strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and radio waves to
generate images of the organs in the body.

• James Haxby, Leslie Ungerleider, and their colleagues (1996) at the
NIMH presented subjects with pictures of either faces or nonsense
patterns, and, using PET, investigated memory performance. In
different conditions subjects were required to remember (encode)
the face, recognise the face, and perceptually analyse the face by
comparing two faces. During these periods, PET scans recorded
changes in regional cerebral blood flow triggered by local neuronal
activity.
IMAGING THE HUMAN BRAIN AND MEMORY cont..

Perceptual Priming and Implicit and Explicit
Memory
Daniel Schacter and his colleagues (1996) at Harvard University investigated the neural
bases of perceptual priming (implicit learning) in a PET study. The scanning was performed
only during the task. Subjects manifested implicit priming behaviorally. No activations or
deactivations were noted in the hippocampus, but blood flow in the bilateral occipital
cortex, (area 19) decreased. The hippocampus was not activated, then, even though
implicit perceptual priming was obtained.
The conclusions from this and other studies are that implicit and explicit retrieval of
information is subserved by separate brain systems. Together with the face encoding data
Haxby and colleagues obtained by PET, and animal and human lesion data, a reasonable
conclusion is that the hippocampus encodes new information but also retrieves recent
information when explicit recollection is involved. Perhaps more interestingly, deactivation
of the visual cortex for previously seen words is a correlate of perceptual priming.

CELLULAR BASES OF LEARNING AND
MEMORY
Neuron

Synapse

Thank you..
Arpana Sharma
Images and information received from various
sites has been updated under these slides to share
knowledge with students. Thanks for these sites
for sharing knowledge.

Neuropsychology learning and memory

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