This document summarizes different aspects of memory, including the three stages of memory (sensory, short-term, and long-term), different types of memories (autobiographical, explicit/declarative, and implicit/procedural), memory impairments such as amnesias and distortions, and specific disorders. It describes various organic and psychogenic causes of amnesia and different types of distortions of memory including false memories, confabulation, and déjà vu.

1. DISORDER OF MEMORY
Psychologist stella

2. STAGES OF MEMORY
 Three types:
 Sensory: is registered for each of the senses
 sensory memory fades within a few seconds.
 short-term: (working memory) allows for the storage of memories for much
longer than the few seconds available to sensory memory
 When memories have been rehearsed in short-term memory they are
encoded into long-term memory.

3.  Long-term memory:
 allows for recall of events from the past and for the utilisation of
information learned through the education system. It is resilient to attack,

4. KINDS OF MEMORIES
 Autographical: Autobiographical memory refers to the memories for
events and issues that relate to oneself.
 represent the personal meaning and interpretation that the event had for
the person at the expense of accuracy
 Explicit & Declarative memory : episodic memory and semantic; (limbic
system, the amygdala and the cerebellum).
 Implicit or procedural: (hippocampus)

5. MEMORY IMPAIRMENTS
 Amnesias (loss of memory) and
 Paramnesias (distortions of memory).

6. AMNESIAS
 Amnesia is defined as partial or total inability to recall past experiences
and events and its origin may be ......
 organic or psychogenic.
 Failure to recall DUE TO
 normal memory decay
 interference from related material
REMEMBERING DOES NOT representing a perfect match to events from the
past.

7. PSYCHOGENIC AMNESIAS
 Dissociative or hysterical amnesia is the sudden amnesia that occurs
during periods of extreme trauma and can last for hours or even days.
 ASSICIATED fugue or wandering state in which the subject travels to
another town or country
 Katathymic amnesia is the inability to recall specific painful memories
personal identity such as name, address and history
personal events
 the ability to perform complex behaviours is maintained.
 the person behaves appropriately to their background and education.

8. ORGANIC AMNESIAS
 Acute brain disease
 Sub-acute coarse brain disease
 Chronic coarse brain disease

9. ACUTE BRAIN DISEASE
 memory is poor owing to disorders of perception and attention hence
failure to encode material
 acute head injury there is an amnesia, known as retrograde amnesia, that
embraces the events just before the injury.
 Anterograde amnesia is amnesia for events occurring after the injury.

10. SUBACUTE COARSE BRAIN DISEASE patient is unable to register new memories
 memories from the remote past remain intact
Chronic coarse brain disease
 Patients with a progressive chronic brain
disease have an amnesia extending over
many years, though the memory for
recent events is lost before that for
remote events.
depressive pseudo-dementia

11. DISTORTIONS OF MEMORY OR PARAMNESIA
 falsification of memory by distortion
 can be conveniently divided into
distortions of recall and
distortions of recognition.
This can occur in normal subjects
 due to the process of normal forgetting or
 due to proactive and retroactive interference from newly acquired material.
 with emotional problems
 in organic states.

12. DISTORTIONS OF RECALL
Retrospective falsification
Retrospective falsification refers to the unintentional distortion of memory
that occurs when it is filtered through a person’s current emotional,
experiential and cognitive state.
 depressive illness who describe all past experiences in negative terms due
to the impact of their current mood.

13.  False memory
False memory is the recollection of an event that did not occur but which the
individual subsequently strongly believes did take place(Brandon et al,
The syndrome refers not to distortion of true memories, as in normal
forgetting, but to the actual construction of memories around events that
never took place.

14.  Screen memory
A screen memory is a recollection that is partially true and partially false; it is
thought that the individual only recalls part of the true memory because
entirety of the true memory is too painful to recall.
For example, an individual may recall that childhood sexual abuse was
perpetrated by a neighbour because it is too painful to recall that the
was, in fact, perpetrated by their own brother.

15. CONFABULATION
 Confabulation is the falsification of memory occurring in clear
consciousness in association with organic pathology. It manifests itself as
the filling-in of gaps in memory by imagined or untrue experiences that
have no basis in fact.

16. Pseudologia fantastica
 Pseudologia fantastica or fluent plausible lying (pathological lying) is the
term used, by convention, to describe the confabulation that occurs in
without organic brain pathology such as personality disorder of antisocial
hysterical type.

17. MUNCHAUSEN’S SYNDROME
 Munchausen’s syndrome is a variant of pathological lying in which the
individual presents to hospitals with bogus illnesses, complex medical
histories and often multiple surgical scars. A proxy form of this condition
has been described in which the individual, usually a parent, produces a
factitious illness in somebody else, generally their child.

18. CRYPTAMNESIA
 Cryptamnesia is described by Sims (1997) as ‘the experience of not
remembering that one is remembering’. For example a person writes a
witty passage and does not realise that they are quoting from some
passage they have seen elsewhere rather than writing something
original.

19. RETROSPECTIVE DELUSIONS
 Retrospective delusions are found in some patients with psychoses who
backdate their delusions in spite of the clear evidence that the illness is
of recent origin. Thus, the person will say that they have always been
persecuted or that they have always been evil. Primary delusional
experiences may take the form of memories and these are known as
delusional memories, consisting of sudden delusional ideas and
delusional perceptions

20. DISTORTIONS OF RECOGNITION
 Déjà vu is not strictly a disturbance of memory, but a problem with the
familiarity of places and events. It comprises the feeling of having
experienced a current event in the past, although it has no basis in fact.
 jamais vous is the knowledge that an event has been experienced before
but is not presently associated with the appropriate feelings of familiarity.
 Déjà entendu, the feeling of auditory recognition, and
 déjà pense, a new thought recognised as having previously occurred, are
related to déjà vu, being different only in the modality of experience.
 These can be experienced by normal subjects as well as among those with
temporal lobe epilepsy.

21.  False reconnaissance is defined as false recognition or misidentification
and it can occur in organic psychoses and in acute and chronic
schizophrenia. It may be positive when the patient recognises strangers
their friends and relatives. In confusional states and acute schizophrenia,
at most, a few people are positively misidentified

22.  In negative misidentification the patient insists that friends and relatives
are not whom they say they are and that they are strangers in disguise.
Some patients assert that some or all people are doubles of the real
people whom they claim to be. This is known as Capgras syndrome and
occurs in schizophrenia and in dementia

23. HYPERAMNESIA
 The opposite of amnesia and paramnesia can also occur and is termed
hyperamnesia, or exaggerated registration, retention and recall.
 Flashbulb memories are those memories that are associated with
intense emotion. They are unusually vivid, detailed and long-lasting.
 Flashbacks are sudden intrusive memories that are associated with the
cognitive and emotional experiences of a traumatic event such as an
accident. It may lead to acting and/or feeling that the event is recurring
and attempts have been made to use this as a defence in some murder
trials. It is regarded as one of the characteristic symptoms of post-
traumatic stress disorder

24. THANKS