Function: The amygdala is a small, almond-shaped structure in the brain that plays a crucial role in processing emotions, particularly fear and pleasure.
Emotional Memories: It is specifically involved in forming and storing emotional memories, making it integral to how we react to emotionally charged events.
Hypothalamus
Function: The hypothalamus regulates essential bodily functions, including temperature control, hunger, thirst, and circadian rhythms.
Role in Memory: While it interacts with other brain structures involved in memory, it is not primarily responsible for holding memories.
Hippocampus
Function: The hippocampus is key for forming new memories and is involved in learning and spatial navigation.
Types of Memory: It plays a significant role in declarative memory (facts and events) but is not specifically linked to emotional memory.
Limbic System
Components: The limbic system includes the amygdala, hippocampus, and other structures like the thalamus and hypothalamus.
Role in Emotion and Memory: It is involved in emotional responses and memory formation but is a broader term encompassing various functions.
Flashbulb Memory
Definition: Flashbulb memories are vivid, detailed memories of significant events, often associated with strong emotional reactions.
Characteristics: These memories feel particularly clear and accurate, even though they may not always be reliable.
Semantic Memory
Definition: Semantic memory involves the storage of general knowledge about the world, concepts, and facts.
Examples: Information like the capital of a country or the meaning of a word falls under semantic memory.
Procedural Memory
Definition: Procedural memory is a type of long-term memory responsible for knowing how to perform tasks and skills.
Examples: Riding a bike, playing a musical instrument, or typing on a keyboard are skills retained through procedural memory.
Autobiographical Memory
Definition: Autobiographical memory encompasses memories of one’s life experiences, combining both episodic (specific events) and semantic (general knowledge) aspects.
Importance: It provides context for personal identity and self-awareness.
Synaesthesia
Definition: Synaesthesia is a neurological condition where stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to automatic experiences in another sensory modality.
Examples: Some people may perceive colors when they hear music or associate certain tastes with specific words.
Form Agnosia
Definition: Form agnosia is a condition where individuals are unable to recognize objects based on their shapes.
Impact: Patients may see objects but fail to identify or interpret them accurately.
Integrative Agnosia
Definition: This condition involves difficulty in integrating multiple visual features into a coherent perception of an object.
Symptoms: Patients can perceive elements but struggle to combine them into recognizable forms.
Appreciative Agnosia
Definition: Appreciative agnosia refers to a deficit in recognizing and appreciating visual objects, despite having intact visual processing abilities.
Examples: Individuals may see an object but not understand what it represents or its function.
Hemi-Attention
Definition: Hemi-attention refers to a reduced awareness of one side of the visual field, often due to brain injury.
Symptoms: Individuals may neglect objects or events on one side, even if their vision is intact.
Contralateral Neglect
Definition: This term describes a condition where individuals ignore stimuli on one side of their body or environment due to brain damage, typically on the opposite side of the injury.
Characteristics: Patients may fail to eat food on one side of their plate or may not acknowledge people standing on the neglected side.
Spatial Neglect
Definition: Spatial neglect is similar to contralateral neglect, where individuals do not attend to one side of space, affecting their perception and interaction with their environment.
Diagnosis: Often diagnosed through tests where patients are asked to draw or bisect lines.
Organic Amnesia
Definition: Organic amnesia refers to memory loss caused by physical damage to the brain, often due to injury, infection, or degenerative diseases.
Examples: Conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, strokes, and traumatic brain injuries can lead to organic amnesia.
Psychogenic Amnesia
Definition: Psychogenic amnesia is memory loss caused by psychological factors rather than physical brain damage.
Causes: It can occur in response to trauma or extreme stress, often resulting in the suppression of painful memories.
Retrograde Amnesia
Definition: Retrograde amnesia involves the loss of memories that were formed before the onset of amnesia.
Characteristics: Individuals may have difficulty recalling past events, personal history, or learned information.
Anterograde Amnesia
Definition: Anterograde amnesia is characterized by the inability to form new memories following the onset of amnesia.
Impact: Individuals can remember past events but struggle to create new memories or learn new information.
Standard Model of Consolidation
Definition: This model suggests that memory consolidation, the process by which new memories stabilize, can take years and becomes increasingly resilient over time.
Mechanism: It emphasizes the role of the hippocampus in the early stages of memory formation, transitioning to more distributed neural networks for long-term storage.
Korsakoff Syndrome
Definition: Korsakoff syndrome is a chronic neurocognitive disorder caused primarily by thiamine deficiency, often associated with prolonged alcohol misuse.
Symptoms: It results in significant memory impairments, particularly in forming new memories and recalling past information.
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)
Definition: ECT is a medical treatment that involves inducing seizures through electrical stimulation of the brain to alleviate severe depression.
Side Effects: While effective for some patients, ECT can lead to temporary amnesia or memory loss, especially for events surrounding the treatment sessions.