A report on Amnesia and Long-term memory

Amnesie

Anterograde amnesia is the inability to transfer new information from the short-term store into the long-term store.

- Amnesia

Research by Meulemans and Van der Linden (2003) found that amnesiac patients with damage to the medial temporal lobe performed more poorly on explicit learning tests than did healthy controls.

- Long-term memory
Amnesie

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Hippocampus (brain)

Anterograde amnesia

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Hippocampus (brain)

In neurology, anterograde amnesia is a loss of the ability to create new memories after the event that caused amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact.

Humans have two hippocampi, one in each hemisphere of the brain. They are located in the medial temporal lobes of the cerebrum. In this lateral view of the human brain, the frontal lobe is at the left, the occipital lobe at the right, and the temporal and parietal lobes have largely been removed to reveal one of the hippocampi underneath.

Hippocampus

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Major component of the brain of humans and other vertebrates.

Major component of the brain of humans and other vertebrates.

Humans have two hippocampi, one in each hemisphere of the brain. They are located in the medial temporal lobes of the cerebrum. In this lateral view of the human brain, the frontal lobe is at the left, the occipital lobe at the right, and the temporal and parietal lobes have largely been removed to reveal one of the hippocampi underneath.
Image 1: The human hippocampus and fornix (left) compared with a seahorse (right)
Image 2: Cross-section of cerebral hemisphere showing structure and location of hippocampus
Image 3: Coronal section of the brain of a macaque monkey, showing hippocampus (circled)
Image 4: Basic circuit of the hippocampus, as drawn by Cajal DG: dentate gyrus. Sub: subiculum. EC: entorhinal cortex
Image 5: Hippocampal location and regions
Rats and cognitive maps
Image 6: Spatial firing patterns of 8 place cells recorded from the CA1 layer of a rat. The rat ran back and forth along an elevated track, stopping at each end to eat a small food reward. Dots indicate positions where action potentials were recorded, with color indicating which neuron emitted that action potential.
Image 7: Examples of rat hippocampal EEG and CA1 neural activity in the theta (awake/behaving) and LIA (slow-wave sleep) modes. Each plot shows 20 seconds of data, with a hippocampal EEG trace at the top, spike rasters from 40 simultaneously recorded CA1 pyramidal cells in the middle (each raster line represents a different cell), and a plot of running speed at the bottom. The top plot represents a time period during which the rat was actively searching for scattered food pellets. For the bottom plot the rat was asleep.
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Image 9: An EEG showing epilepsy right-hippocampal seizure onset
Image 10: An EEG showing epilepsy left-hippocampal seizure onset
Image 11: Drawing by Italian pathologist Camillo Golgi of a hippocampus stained using the silver nitrate method
thumb|Hippocampus highlighted in green on coronal T1 MRI images
thumb|Hippocampus highlighted in green on sagittal T1 MRI images
thumb|Hippocampus highlighted in green on transversal T1 MRI images

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.

It is apparent that complete amnesia occurs only when both the hippocampus and the parahippocampus are damaged.

Overview of the forms and functions of memory.

Memory

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Faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed.

Faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed.

Overview of the forms and functions of memory.
Olin Levi Warner, Memory (1896). Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C.
The working memory model
The garden of oblivion, illustration by Ephraim Moses Lilien.
Regulatory sequence in a promoter at a transcription start site with a paused RNA polymerase and a TOP2B-induced double-strand break
Brain regions involved in memory formation including medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)
Regulatory sequence in a promoter at a transcription start site with a paused RNA polymerase and a TOP2B-induced double-strand break

Memory loss is usually described as forgetfulness or amnesia.

Memory is often understood as an informational processing system with explicit and implicit functioning that is made up of a sensory processor, short-term (or working) memory, and long-term memory.

Episodic memory

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Memory of everyday events that can be explicitly stated or conjured.

Memory of everyday events that can be explicitly stated or conjured.

Along with semantic memory, it comprises the category of explicit memory, one of the two major divisions of long-term memory (the other being implicit memory).

The label "amnesia" is most often given to patients with deficits in episodic memory.

Retrograde amnesia

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Loss of memory-access to events that occurred or information that was learned in the past.

Loss of memory-access to events that occurred or information that was learned in the past.

This would resemble generic amnesia.

The hippocampus deals largely with memory consolidation, where information from the working memory and short-term memory is encoded into long-term storage for future retrieval. Amnesic patients with damage to the hippocampus are able to demonstrate some degree of unimpaired semantic memory, despite a loss of episodic memory, due to spared parahippocampal cortex. In other words, retrograde amnesics "know" about information or skill, but cannot "remember" how they do.

Short-term memory

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Capacity for holding a small amount of information in an active, readily available state for a short interval.

Capacity for holding a small amount of information in an active, readily available state for a short interval.

In contrast, long-term memory holds information indefinitely.

Patients with this form of amnesia have an intact ability to retain small amounts of information over short time scales (up to 30 seconds) but have little ability to form longer-term memories (illustrated by patient HM).

Lobes of the human brain (temporal lobe is shown in green)

Temporal lobe

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One of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals.

One of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals.

Lobes of the human brain (temporal lobe is shown in green)
Animation showing the position of the human left temporal lobe

The temporal lobe communicates with the hippocampus and plays a key role in the formation of explicit long-term memory modulated by the amygdala.

Amnesia, Korsakoff syndrome, Klüver–Bucy syndrome