This document discusses different types of memory disorders including amnesia. It describes several case studies of patients such as patient SP who had strokes damaging the medial temporal lobes. The document contrasts different types of amnesia such as anterograde vs. retrograde amnesia. It also discusses memory impairments in Alzheimer's disease where massive cell death occurs throughout the brain. The document analyzes what memory functions are typically spared or impaired in amnesia patients and Alzheimer's patients.

1. Memory Disorders
Psychology 3717

2. Introduction
• The strange case of
Charles D’Sousa
• Or is it Philip
Cutajar?
• Rare type of
disorder
• Some stuff clearly
spared
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

3. Introduction
• Results with amnesiacs has lead to
many discoveries about memory
– Episodic vs. semantic memory
– Procedural vs. declarative memory
– Implicit vs. explicit memory
– Phonological loop vs. visuo spatial
sketchpad

4. problems
• Taxonomy
• Individual differences
• Interpretation
• Application
• Mostly comes down to a lack of control,
which of course is inevitable

5. Case studies
• We pretty much have to rely on these
• They are, thankfully, rare
• Usually some sort of accident or a
stroke

6. Case SP
• Stroke patient
• Both Medial temporal lobes, left Hp and
lots of surrounding area, but not the
amygdala
• Had trouble naming objects
• Anterograde and retrograde amnesia
• Similar to KC

7. Clive Wearing
• Case of encephalitis
• Pervasive amnesia
• Both semantic and
episodic impairment
• Temporal lobe
dilation
• Hp destroyed
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

8. Performance Patterns
• Retrograde amnesia
– Losing past memories
• Anterograde amnesia
– No new memories
• Spared function
– Often implicit tasks, such as priming or
ability to learn a new skill

9. Typically spared
• Working Memory
• Semantic memory
– Even KC could learn new stuff
• Declarative information using Tulving’s
method
– Restrict errors

10. Why?
• Difficulties in interference, retrieval and
encoding
• Consolidation
– Tends to come down to something to do
with HP
– Context or sending item off for processing
or some such thing

11. Semantic memory problems
• What is a cat?
• Temporal lobe problems
• Oddly enough, episodic memory often
intact in these rare cases

12. Working Memory Problems
• There are cases of people with intact
phonological loops and visuo spatial
sketchpads that are pretty much toast
• And vice versa

13. Alzheimer’s
• More than half of all
dementia is from AD
• 2 times more
women than men
– Could be because
women live longer
though
• dementia and brain
stuff
– Neurofibrillary
tangles and neuritic
plaques

14. AD
• MASSIVE cell death
• In essence, you get like lesions
everywhere
• ‘cortical’ dementia, but you get these
lesions, holes really, everywhere

15. Neurotransmitters affected
• ACh is important in memory, especially
in HP
• The ACh system is severely damaged
in AD
• Indeed it is almost targeted
• Other systems too though

16. Memory effects
• Episodic effects
• Eventually semantic effects
• Retrieval cues don’t help
– Information was not even encoded
• Nondeclarative stuff, skills etc, are the
last to go

17. Treatment
• Most drugs target the cholinergic
system
• This disease not only affects the victim,
but also his/her family
• NGF is promising
• Treatments will come, but, reversal, I
dunno
• Respite care is key for the family

18. Conclusions
• Frankly there is not a great deal of hope
for most amnesiacs
• That said, neuroscience is moving
pretty fast
• Has helped us understand normal
function