2. PROCESS OF REMEMBERING :
1. Registration or encoding: capacity to add new information to the memory store
2. Retention or storage: ability to maintain knowledge that can subsequently return to
consciousness
3. Retrieval: capacity to access stored information from memory by recognition, recall or implicitly
that relevant task is performed
4. Recall: effortful retrieval of stored information into consciousness at a chosen moment
5. Recognition: retrieval of stored information that depends on the identification of items
previously learned and is based on either remembering (effortful recollection) or knowing
(familiarity based recollection)
3. TYPES OF MEMORY
• Three types :
1. Sensory memory
2. Short term memory
3. Long term memory
4. SENSORY MEMORY
• Initial and early phase of memory
• Purpose is to facilitate the rapid processing of incoming stimuli
• Comparisons with already stored SHORT and LONGTERM MEMORY.
• Most of it fades within a few seconds
• For example : visual image -iconic memory
auditory -echoic memory
• Selective attention allows for shifting of material from sensory memory to SHORTTERM MEMORY.
5. SHORTTERM MEMORY
• Also called WORKING MEMORY
• Allows for the storage of memories for much longer than few seconds
• Aids constant updating of one’s surroundings
6. LONGTERM MEMORY
• Rehearsed short term memories are encoded in long term memory
• Encoding is a process of placing information into what is believed to be a limitless
memory reservoir
• Allows for recall of events from the past and for the utilisation of information
learnt through the education system
• It is resilient to attack, unlike short memory, which is sensitive to disorders of brain
tissue such as ALZHEIMER’S disease.
7. • Autobiographical memories : Memories for events and issues that relate to
oneself.
• For example, wedding day of married person
• Characterised by a general recall of the event and a recall of a few specific details.
• Flashbulb memories : specific type of autobiographical memory in which person
becomes aware of an emotionally arousing event
• For example, the 9/11 terrorist bombings.
8. Conceptualized into two retrieval systems
1. Declarative system or
Explicit memory
A. Sematic (fact memory)
B. Episodic (memory for specific
autobiographical incidents)
2. Non declarative system or
Implicit memory
10. AMNESIA
• Defined as partial or total inability to recall past experience and events.
• Its origin may be ORGANIC or PSYCHOGENIC
1. Psychogenic amnesia
a) Hysterical amnesia
or Dissociative amnesia
b) Catathymic amnesia
C) Anxiety amnesia
2. Organic amnesia
a) Acute brain disease
a) Subacute coarse brain disease
b) Chronic coarse brain disease
11. HYSTERICALAMNESIA
• Amnesia for personal identity such as name, address and history as well as for personal
events
• While at the same time the ability to perform complex behaviours is maintained
• Associated with a fugue or wandering state
• Occurs during periods of extreme trauma and last for hours or even days
• Believed to be more common in prior history of head injury
12. CATATHYMICAMNESIA
• Motivated forgetting
• Inability to recall specific painful memories
• Believed to occur due to defence mechanism of Repression
• Conscious motivation to forget, i.e., suppression
Unconscious motivation to forget, i.e., primary repression
• No loss of personal identity
• More persistent and circumscribed than dissociation
13. ANXIETYAMNESIA
• Occurs when there is anxious preoccupation or poor concentration
• It may wrongly suggest dissociative amnesia
• Seen in depressive illness and generalised anxiety
• Depressive pseudodementia : more severe forms of amnesia in depressive disorders
resemble dementia
• Resolved once underlying disorder is treated
14. ACUTE BRAIN DISEASE
• Poor memory is due to disorder of perception and attention and the failure to
encode material in long term memory
• In acute head injury there is amnesia, known as Retrograde amnesia, which
embraces the events just before injury
• Following accidents there is amnesia for events occurring after the injury, known
as Anterograde amnesia
15. SUBACUTE COARSE BRAIN DISEASE
• The patient is unable to register new memories
• The memory disorder is characterized by inability to learn new information
(anterograde amnesia) and recall previously learned information (retrograde
amnesia)
• Memories from remote past remains intact
• Seen in: korsakoff’s syndrome, Multiple sclerosis, ECT, Head injury, CVD
16. CHRONIC COARSE BRAIN DISEASE
• The amnesia extends over many years seen in
1. Patients with amnesia or those with korsakoff’s syndrome
2. Patient with progressive chronic brain disease
• Ribot’s law of memory regression :
in dementing illness the memory of recent events is lost before the memory for
remote events
17. Distortion of Memory / PARAMNESIA
• It is the falsification of memory.
• Can be divided into
1. Distortion of recall
2. Distortion of recognition
• Can occur in normal subjects due to
1.The process of normal forgetting or
2. Proactive and retroactive interference
Also occur in those with emotional problems
18. PARAMNESIA
DISTORTIONS OF RECALL
1. Retrospective falsification
2. False memory
3. Screen memory
4. Confabulation
5. Pseudologia fantastica
6. Munchausen’s syndrome
7. Vorbeireden or approximate
answers
8. Cryptamnesia
9. Retrospective delusions
DISTORTIONS OF RECOGNITION
• Déjà vu
• Jamais vu
• Deja entendu
• Deja pense
19. 1. Retrospective falsification
• Unintentional distortion of memory that occurs when it is filtered through a
person’s current emotional, experiential and cognitive state
• For example, depressed patient describes all past experiences in negative terms
due to his current mood
• Often found in depressive illness but any psychiatric illness can lead to
retrospective falsification
• Even following recovery the falsification may continue
20. 2. False memory
• Recollection of event that did not occur but which the individual subsequently
strongly believes did take place
• The actual construction of memories around events that never took place
• Refers not to distortion of true memories
• Source amnesia: difficulty in remembering the source from which the information
was aquired
21. 3. Screen memory
• Recollection that is partially true and partially false
• It is thought that the individual only recalls part of true memory because the
whole is too painful to recall
• For example, individual may recall that childhood sexual abuse was perpetrated by
a neighbour
22. 4. Confabulation
• Falsification of memory occurring in clear consciousness in association with organic pathology
• Manifests itself as the filling in of gaps in memory by imagined or untrue experiences that have no
basis in fact
• Diminishes as the impairment worsens
• 1.Embarrassed type: tries to fill in gaps in memory as a result of an awareness of a deficit
• 2.Fantastic type: details exceeding the need of the memory impairment such as description of wild
adventures
• Pictorial thinking or Memory hallucinations
23. 5. Pseudologia fantastica
• Fluent plausible lying (pathological lying), the confabulation that occurs in those
without organic brain pathology such as personality disorder of anti social and
hysterical type
• There is blurring of boundary between reality and fantasy
24. 6. Munchausen’s syndrome
• Variant of pathological lying in which the presents to the hospital with bogus
medical illness, complex medical histories and often multiple surgical scars
• Proxy form: the individual (parent) produces factitious illness in somebody else
(child)
25. 7.Vorbeireden or approximate answers
• Approximate answers suggest that the patient understands the question but
appears to be avoiding the correct answer
• Ganser observed this amnesia with unconscious production of symptoms to avoid
a court appearance
• ganser described several common features:
1. Clouding of consciousness with disorientation
2. Auditory and visual hallucination
26. 1. Amnesia for period during which the symptoms were manifest
2. Conversion symptoms and recent head injury
3. Infection and several emotional stress
27. 8. Cryptamnesia
• The experience of not remembering that one is remembering
• There is no indication as to whether this is a common phenomenon or whether it
is associated with any specific psychiatric disorder
28. 9. Retrospective delusions
• Found in patient with psychosis
• Person will say that they have always been persecuted or that they have always
been evil
• Primary delusional experiences may take form of memories known as delusional
memories consisting of sudden delusional ideas and delusional perceptions
29. DISTORTIONOF RECOGNITION
Déjà vu : feeling of having experienced a current event in the past, although it has
no basis in fact
Jamais vu : event has been experienced before but is not presently associated with
the appropriate feeling of familiarity.
Deja entendu : the feeling of auditory recognition
Deja pense : a new thought recognised as having previously occurred, are related to
déjà vu, being different only in the modality of experience
30. HYPERAMNESIA
• Exaggerated registration, retention and recall
• Flashbulb memories are those memories that are associated with intense
emotion
• Flashbacks are sudden intrusive memories that are associated with the cognitive
and emotional experiences of traumatic event such as accident
