What we would like you to do is to
find a topic from this week's chapter that you were interested in and search
the internet for material on that topic.
Please be sure to use at least 3
quality resources. If you use videos, please limit it to one video.
Once you have completed your search
and explorations we would like you to:
1a) State what your topic is.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
2) Next, we would like you to take
the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize
it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner. By
integrating/synthesizing we mean taking what your read/experienced from the
internet search organize the information into the main themes, issues, info,
examples, etc. about your topic and then write about the topic in your own
words using the information you have about the topic.
3) At the end of your post, please
include working URLs for the three websites. For each
URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it
contributed to your post.
My topic this week is motivated forgetting, which is one of the theories of forgetting mentioned in the book. I am interested in this topic because I did not know that one could consciously forget unpleasant experiences, although I knew about some cases of unconscious repression of some traumatic childhood experiences. According to Sigmund Freud, motivated forgetting is a form of defense mechanism that protects individuals from unpleasant memories. By blocking out the negative or traumatic memories (ranging from forgetting to sign tax returns when they owe money to forgetting childhood trauma), an individual is allowed live in the present comfortably. Repression is when the act of forgetting is done unconsciously, and suppression is when an individual consciously avoid the memory to forget.
With that said, motivated forgetting sounds like a perfect solution to a happy life. However, to Freud, although forgetting allows individuals to escape from their traumatic pasts or feelings, those forgotten memories still has an impact of their present lives. To completely be freed from the pain, one must retrieve the forgotten parts and face them before being able to live more comfortably in the present.
There are ways to suppress memories. When an individual would like to forget unpleasant memories consciously, there are instructions for them to follow in order to achieve the goal of forgetting. And when unable to cope with some certain memories, we may also unconsciously ignore it and forget it to protect our ego. But that does not indicate that the unpleasant memories are gone for good, according to psychoanalytic theories. Repressed memories can still unconsciously manipulate the individuals although they do not recall the memories anymore. Without being aware of the forgotten memories, an individual may have difficulties in life such as struggling to form relationships or avoiding doctors their whole lives. Without bring those memories up to the awareness level, individuals will keep being manipulated by those memories greatly.
To free these people who have repressed their memories, but are still enduring the impacts of those forgotten memories, psychologist may help them retrieve those memories, so these people can resolve the underlying issues to have a better, more comfortable life. The process of retrieval can involve many techniques, and one of them is hypnosis. The criticism is that hypnosis puts the patient in a more vulnerable and suggestible position; therefore, whether the therapist was “suggesting” certain memories or not is a big issue regarding this technique.
A few decades ago, the issues of child abuse victims can completely repress or suppress their memories began. It is said that those memories could be forgotten completely and could only be retrieved much later in life with the help of psychotherapy. Many legal cases therefore set in, with “victims” claiming that they had recovered their memories regarding being abused, vividly describing the “events” in details including pointing out the “abuser”. Of course we do not know whether or not those “recalled” memories were true or false with one hundred percent certainty, but we must remain skeptical, to prevent any more damage to the real victims involving in the craze of “repressed” memories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_forgetting
Wikipedia provides me with information in great details as usual. However, it would be nicer if how memories are consciously and unconsciously forgotten was explained. There are also a few things mentioned in this site that are inconsistent with what was explained in the textbook.
http://psych.answers.com/memory/what-is-motivated-forgetting
This site provides great details regarding the criticism and the techniques used to “retrieve” “repressed” memory. Motivated forgetting is also well defined.
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-motivated-forgetting.htm
This site provides more information regarding false memory. It is not a bad thing but my topic is motivated forgetting and I would like more information regarding my topic. But I guess you cannot discuss motivated forgetting without talking about the retrieval of those “memories”.
Chapter 7 Topical Blog
The topic from chapter 7 that I chose to further look at is the concept of false memories. False memories are interesting to me because I am curious to know why and how they occur. What in our minds causes us to have false memories and what specifically does a false memory entail? False memories fascinate me as I can think of a time when a memory has been stuck in my head before, but yet I realize that it was not even an event or thing I physically experienced myself. Chapter 7 discusses how false memories are instill in individuals’ minds and how false memories occur as memory errors for people. The research by Roediger and McDermott that is demonstrated in our textbook explains false memory being constructed by the types of questioning that were used to elicit the memory in the study’s participants’ minds. The researchers found that, depending on how a question was worded, the participants would answer differently to what they thought about a situation. This research made me want to dig deeper into the concept of false memories and how our brains are affected.
False memory is when an individual recalls an event differently than it really was or recalls an event that never happened at all. False memories may occur due to mixing up information from different experiences that happened at different times. They may also occur due to treating dreams as if they were actual real-life experiences. As our textbook stated, false memories are a type of memory errors. My sources explain that the error occurring is in source memory. A person may remember the facts about a memory, but they do not accurately recall the source of the memory.
False memories can so be implanted by other people. Our textbook demonstrated this through the research done by Roediger and McDermott, but my sources also discuss this aspect. Distortions of memories can occur easily, by switching the roles people may have played in a past experience. You may be able to clearly see the actions of the memory playing in your mind, but you may have the roles people played in the experience backwards. Again, this leads to memory error such as confusing the source of the memory.
There are many other ways of why and how false memories occur. If you hear a story of a party or gathering over and over by people at the event, you may begin to share the happenings of the event with other people as if you were there too. This occurs because you heard the story so many times that you start to believe you were there yourself when really you were not. Our brains may also unfold an event completely incorrectly because that person only remembered certain people, sounds, and actions that occurred at the event. Our hippocampus can only hold on to so much information and then our brains become so busy that the brain cannot handle any more information.
My sources also explain the use of inferences and inaccurate perception during an event that causes false memory. While an event is occurring, our brain is trying to encode the information, that our mind does not accurately recall all the pieces to the event. Another example is if we are trying to unfold the pieces of a crime or the misplacement of something that false memories may arise from inferences made during the event. When we are trying to unfold pieces of a memory, we may use prior knowledge to make sense of what is going on and interpret things incorrectly.
Our minds are so busy that false memories can easily occur. It is important, then, to focus on only one thing at a time to avoid confusion later.
http://www.skepdic.com/falsememory.html
This URL really helped to explain what false memory is and how it occurs. The URL so helped in connecting the research from our textbook by explaining what memory error occurs. The website discussed the error of source memory and why false memories occur from this error.
http://science.time.com/2013/11/19/remember-that-no-you-dont-study-shows-false-memories-afflict-us-all/
This URL discussed more about the brain and why our mind works the way it does during false memories. The website also explained how false memories occur and different ways in which they occur.
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/False_memory
This URL discussed what false memory is and why false memories occur. It explained factors that cause false memories such as inaccurate perception and inferences. It also stated that false memories can easily be instilled in someone and how false memories easily occur for countless people.
1)--My topic is REM sleep, and more specifically REM behavior disorder, or RBD. It relates to the chapter because it is a condition where individuals have unusual actions and behaviors that occur during the rapid eye movement phase which inhibits their ability to engage in a full nights rest. I chose RBD as my topic because I have always been very curious about sleep and dreams and how they affect the conscious mind. As someone who has had sleeping troubles in the past, I find the topic very interesting and wanted to take a deeper look at something related to REM sleep.
2)--As I mentioned earlier, RBD is a parasomnial disorder that affects the brains ability to engage in REM sleep. During REM sleep the body experiences a temporary paralysis of most muscles. This is not true for those experiencing RBD. Those with RBD have incomplete or no muscle paralysis at all, so the person physically acts out what they are dreaming, which often includes flailing arms and legs and continuous movement during this stage.
Doctors are typically unable to pinpoint an exact cause of RBD in patients. It is commonly found in patients with Parkinson’s and dementia, as well as those with narcolepsy. It affects men more so than women and is typically diagnosed later in life. It has also been shown to be caused by adverse reactions to certain drugs or during drug or alcohol withdrawal. Prescribing low doses of clonazepam and benzodiazepine have been effective in roughly 90% of RBD cases, making treatment rather simple once a diagnosis is clear. If these are not effective, some antidepressants as well as melatonin have shown to prove beneficial. Because sleepwalking is often seen with RBD, doctors typically advise patients to keep furniture and sharp objects away from the bed, sleep on the ground floor, and to place cushions around the bed in order to help prevent injury while sleepwalking.
In recent studies, REM sleep behavior disorder has been shown as an indication to the development of Parkinson’s disease, dementia, or other related types of synucleinopathy, or neurodegenerative disorder. The Mayo Clinic study studied 172 patients diagnosed with RBD, who had a mean average age of 62. Of these 172, 151 were later diagnosed with Parkinson’s an average of 6 years later, while patients died an average of 13 years after diagnosis of RBD. RBD was shown in the study to appear years before the onset of cognitive and motor problems associated with Parkinson’s and dementia.
The bright side of RBD is that it is becoming a great tool for helping to diagnose these degenerative disorders earlier because they are hard to diagnose from tests and brain scans and are often unnoticed until the physical symptoms begin. It is much easier to tell if a patient has RBD compared to Parkinson’s, which is much harder to detect and treat. And in the studies used, over 90% of RBD patients were later diagnosed with a degenerative disease of some sort. This makes RBD a great tool for early diagnosis of Parkinson’s, dementia, and other degenerative diseases.
I mentioned earlier that Rem Sleep Behavior Disorder is typically seen in males over the age of fifty. There are younger people suffering from RBD as well, and according to another Mayo Clinic study, that may be linked to the use of antidepressants. The study used a group of twenty patients under age 50 (average age 34) diagnosed with RBD without a degenerative disorder. 80% of these RBD sufferers also reported taking an antidepressant, compared to only 15% of the non-RBD control group. The younger group also reported a much higher rate of female RBD patients (45 percent), compared to just 13% for the older group. Experts are unsure whether antidepressants can cause an RBD diagnosis or whether RBD results in psychiatric diagnoses which in turn lead to antidepressant prescriptions. Either way there is obviously some link between RBD and antidepressant use, especially in younger patients, and it should be looked at closer.
3-- http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/247730.php
This site had a good amount of background info and basics on RBD. It gave a good parameter of the disorder, typical patients, how it is treated and diagosed
http://www.clinicalneurologynews.com/index.php?id=9868&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=142591&cHash=6a6b5c9123aedb02c70ea45faf2b65af
This article gave me the information on how RBD predicts Parkinson’s and degenerative disorders. It gave a great amount of info they had taken from the Mayo Clinic study and helped to outline the link between RBD and later mental disorders.
http://psychcentral.com/news/archives/2006-06/mc-rsb061506.html
This is the article I used to describe the link between RBD and antidepressants. This was a very valuable site because all the other information I found focused on older patients, as most RBD patients are over 50 years old. The article helped show that there are RBD patients in their teens and twenties and that there may be a common reason why they all have a disorder typically only seen in the elderly.
1a) State what your topic is.
Eidetic memory/ Photographic memory.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
A case of photographic memory is discussed within the chapter under the section of extraordinary memory. The section talks about a woman named Elizabeth who was able to mentally project an image of a picture onto a surface. The woman could also visualize a poem in a foreign language she read several years earlier and copy a line from the poem equally as well.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I was interested in this because I often hear people say they have a photographic memory, but I know it is bullshit because it is extremely rare and even in the cases of people that actually do have it, even they cannot remember the object perfectly. I aimed to figure out just how common an eidetic memory or photographic memory is and how exactly it works.
2)
Being a trivia buff a photographic memory or eidetic memory has always fascinated me, I have always wanted to know everything. Unfortunately I have trouble remember where my keys are sometimes or which day of the week it is, so I was never going to be a memory prodigy. While I do not have an eidetic memory, which is by definition the ability to recall images, sounds or objects in memory with great precision, other individuals I have known or met throughout my life have claimed to have this unique and rare ability. While these people claim to possess this ability they have curiously never demonstrated it, which led me to believe they were over glorifying themselves. As we discussed in the previous chapter there are individuals identified as having a related condition known as Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory who are able to remember very intricate details of their own personal life, but this ability does not seem to extend to other, non-autobiographical information. With the exception of Elizabeth, the woman discussed in the book, an article claims that of the people whom have been thoroughly tested, no one claiming to have eidetic memory has proven this ability.
Undoubtedly some people do have remarkable memories. As we discussed in class last week chess masters can best multiple opponents while blindfolded and card sharks can memorize the order of a shuffled deck of cards in less than a minute. But people with superhuman memories tend to be skilled at one specific task, like chess or cards. While people can improve their memory through techniques like mnemonics and practice, those with eidetic memory are born with it. Children are more likely to possess eidetic memory than adults but they begin losing the ability around age six as they learn to process information more abstractly. Many psychologist believe we grow out of this ability because it would just be difficult to remember every single image from our daily lives.
While most of us lose our eidetic memory at an early age I did come across a very interesting individual who has maintained the ability throughout his life. British born Stephen Wiltshire is a prodigious savant, or someone with a skill level equivalent to or greater than that of a prodigy, regardless of any cognitive disability. The most common trait of these savants is their limitless mnemonic skills, with many having eidetic or photographic memories. Prodigious savants are extremely rare, estimates suggest fewer than fifty or so such individuals are alive today. Steven is capable of drawing the entire skyline of a city after a helicopter ride with unbelievable precision. Steven was a mute when he was younger and was diagnosed as autistic at the age of 3. He gained an interest in drawing very early and eventually learned to speak around age 5 but mostly expressed himself through his art. While he has been the subject of many documentaries Steven continues his work today and can be seen in many online videos, one of which I will post. While a photographic or eidetic memory does exists they are extremely rare and often come with other cognitive disabilities.
3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory
This was a useful site to learn more about the individuals who have been scientifically tested for photographic memory.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200603/the-truth-about-photographic-memory
This site helped to explain other types of memory that are similar to photographic memory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlNiAqYN6ZQ
This video demonstrates the prodigious savant Steven Wiltshire’s amazing ability to draw a city landscape from memory with impeccable detail and precision
1a) The topic I chose to do more research about was false memories.
1b) This topic directly relates to this chapter, because on page 207, there is a whole section on false memories and memory errors. The book provides an activity for us to complete and then goes on to talk about the famous Lofter and Palmer example of getting lost in a shopping mall. I wasn’t that thrilled reading about this example because there isn’t much to it.
1c) I know Lofter came up with some very important information on the topic, but what was provided in the book just didn’t thrill me much. I wanted to do more research on this topic so that I could have a better understanding of how false memories are implanted and different examples of cases where they played a big role.
2) As I stated above, when describing false memories, the textbook mainly touched on the lost in a mall example which we have all heard of many times before. However, there are many more very interesting examples besides that. Paul Ryan, reported finishing a marathon in under 3 hours when his time was actually considerably longer; Mitt Romney reported having strong memories of the Golden Jubilee which actually took place before he was born; Hillary Clinton described a visit to Bosnia during the civil war where she was faced with enemy snipers, but in actuality this never happened. In all three of these cases the people at fault are intelligent, educated politicians with a lot of experience, but none of these three things protected them from having false memories. In another example a man named Gary Ramona was accused of raping his daughter repeatedly, and for this he lost his executive position at work and his wife divorced him, it was later discovered that Ramona’s daughter was receiving psychotherapy for bulimia and the therapist had implanted these memories. There are many more cases similar to this one. In 1986 Nadean Cool underwent hypnosis and other techniques by her therapist due to a traumatic experience. With this the therapist convinced Cool of having 120 different personalities, being involved in a satanic cult, eating babies, being raped, having sex with animals, and being forced to watch the murder of her 8 year old friend. Eventually Cool realized that these memories have been planted, and she sued her therapist for malpractice and won! Next a church counselor convinced a clergy member that her father had been raping her and her mother helped by holding her down. She also convinced her that he had impregnated her twice, but she gave herself an abortion with a clothes hanger. This forced her father to lose his position on the clergy, but eventually in a lawsuit it was proven by different medical examinations that the daughter was still a virgin. All of this misinformation has the potential for invading our memories when we talk to people, when we are suggestively interrogated or when we read or view media coverage about some event that we may have experience ourselves.
For this reason false memory becomes especially important when being used in eyewitness testimony. According to the Innocence Project, eyewitness testimony played a role in 75% of guilty verdicts eventually overturned by DNA testing, even after people spent years in prison or even some faced the death penalty. However this was not because the witnesses were lying, it was because their minds were being tricked and they actually believed these things to be true. People who have false memories can beat polygraph machines even when they are confronted by facts, such as DNA evidence, and they still refuse to believe that their memories are wrong. Interestingly so, there has been a study done on mice that shows how we can even implant false memories in animals. To do this they expose mice to a small room, let them get familiar with it, and then they administer a electroshock with the addition of a blue light. Later they expose these same mice to a neutral room where they feel comfortable until the blue light comes on then they become scared and they believe that this is an implanted memory (I sort of feel like this is reinforcement).
3) http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm
This website was useful in many ways. First it provided several different examples of false memories that were very interesting to read about. Next, it explained a bit more about how false memories can be implanted in us based off our childhood using the lost in the mall example and a few others I haven’t learned about yet. Finally it provided some interesting information on imagination inflation, impossible memories, and again how false memories form.
http://www.insidescience.org/content/scientists-produce-false-memories-mice/1278
This site was very useful because it provided much information on false memories and gave examples of how they can be planted into animals. It then expanded on how important this is when it comes to eyewitness testimony, and it also touched on how people with these false memories are not lying because they truly believe their memories.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/media-spotlight/201211/implanting-false-memories
This website was useful because it provided a few up to date examples of false memories implanted in intelligent, educated people. It also gave an example of two different trials that were held due to false memories and expanded on two different paradigms founded by Dr. Loftus.
1) For this week’s topical blog I decided to look into failure to encode. This relates back to the book because the book talks about encoding and how if we don’t encode properly then we will not retain the information. I found this topic particularly interesting in the fact that we often find that we are going to classes on a daily basses but may notice that the class we never miss we still don’t have a very good grade in, this is because during that class we are not able to code the information to get it into our LTM.
2) Failure to encode is a big thing that happens in our memory, as we are going about our lives we may notice that we don’t remember fully things we know we may have done. Failure to encode is when we are unable to store information in our long term memory that we may have thought we knew. This can also be something like when you try to recall information that you think you knew you can’t recall what really it is that you are looking for. This could be from it not making it into your long term memory or it could be from a theory called decay theory. Decay theory is when information is lost over time after it is not been used we are no longer able to recall the information. Often times we have so much going on in our lives that it is hard to pay attention to everything that is going on at one time and this makes it difficult for use to store and remember things that went on throughout the day and even what has happened in the past week without having the ability to pay attention. There are four levels at which encoding occurs from shallow to deep, with the deeper processing producing better memory. When using our working memory we have to be able to use repetition to be able to encode enough memory so that we will not forget the information and it will process into our long term memory. Sometime we may go through traumatic events in our lives and we wish that we couldn’t remember what really happened but unfortunately we feel as if it will never go away. Motivated forgetting is when you actively work to forget a memory but one problem with this theory is that scientists can’t fully test whether or not the memory truly gets forgotten or not. In a sense we our our memories, if we never stored information into our long term memories we would not be able to tell information like our beliefs, values, influences, and even our perceptions as we would not be able to remember the experiences that we may have had as we went through the encoding process because we were unable to process the information correctly so that we would be able to latter retrieve it. Failure to encode comes along with so many different parts of memory that must be going on correctly for us to be able to encode the information properly without it we would never be able to put information into our long term memory and we would never have experiences to remember.
http://www.hf.faa.gov/Webtraining/Cognition/CogFinal035.htm -This website gave me a deeper background on where encoding and failure to encode play a part in our daily lives and what would happen if we didn’t have experiences that were stored in our long term memories.
http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/tp/explanations-for-forgetting.htm- this website gave me information about different types of memory and how we store the information and how failure to encode works and another type such as motivated forgetting.
http://psychclasses.wikispaces.com/Group+-+Chapter+07+-+Memory this website gave me more information about encoding and levels of processing, learning that we have four levels of processing and the deeper we process the greater the chance that we will retain the information into our long term memory.
Context-dependent memory is when an individual is able to recall information better in the same environment that that individual learned the information in. For example, if you learn about cognitive psychology in your dorm room, you will be better at recalling information about cognitive psychology in your dorm room. Context-dependent memory differs from state-dependent memory in that state-dependent memory is when an individual’s physical state affects his or her ability to recall information. For example, if you learn about different species of plants while you are extremely angry at your roommate for throwing a party and not cleaning up afterwards, you will be able to recall information about species of plants better when you are angry. Context-dependent memory depends on the environment while state-dependent memory depends on an individual physical state.
One belief relating to context and state-dependent memory is that listening to music while studying is either bad or good. The effects of listening to music while studying are actually quite mixed. If the music is distracting, it is not good music to listen to while studying. For example, music with lyrics might infer with concentration and make recall more difficult. However, music can boost mood thereby boosting motivation which can aid studying especially when the student is exhausted or stressed. Context-dependent learning dictates that when it is important to be able to recall the information, student should study in an environment that approximates the environment where the information will need to be recalled such as a classroom. According to context-dependent learning, students should not listen to music while studying for the best recall of information since they typically do not have the option to listen to music while taking a test.
Another popular belief related to context-dependent memory is that chewing gum positively influences cognition. Initially, it was thought that chewing gum increased concentration; however, many researchers could not find support for this hypothesis. One research study found that chewing gum could induce context-dependent learning; however, these results were unsupported by other research studies. When methodological concerns were controlled, chewing gum was not a strong enough cue to create a context-dependent memory. So while chewing gum may have some cognitive benefits, these benefits do not appear to be associated with context-dependent memory.
http://scienceofeducation2013.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/context-and-state-dependent-memory-blog-6-week-7-11th-march/ This resource distinguished between context and state-dependent memory. It also discussed several examples of the two different types of memory.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666306005939# This article shed light on the gum chewing debate. It refuted findings of an earlier article linking gum chewing to context-dependent memory.
http://education.seattlepi.com/listening-music-doing-homework-affect-grade-school-1365.html This resource discussed the effects of music on memory while studying. This topic is still largely debated.
My full blog didn't copy into the text box. Here is the first part of it describing 1a) State what your topic is. 1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter. 1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
My topic is context and state-dependent memory. This topic relates to the chapter because Chapter 7 discussed many different ways to improve memory recall. Context and state-dependent memory can either improve or inhibit memory recall. I am interested in this topic because I have heard lots of myths or false beliefs surrounding this topic so I would like to see what the research has to say about it.
I really wanted to do some more research on mnemonic techniques. I am interested in these because I feel like if we could actually master a few of them, taking tests would be much simpler. I have always been interested in effective ways to memorize things for short term things like tests or phone numbers and these techniques are very good ways to do that.
In my research I found that there are about nine different mnemonic techniques. They are: music, name, expression/word, model, ode/rhyme, note organization, image, connection, and spelling mnemonics. Music mnemonics is when you change the lyrics of a song you are familiar with to include the information you are trying to memorize. I personally did this in fifth grade to help myself remember the planets. Whenever I need that information even today that song immediately comes into my head and I have yet to forget the planets or the order they are in. A large majority of people are able to memorize a lot of songs so it makes sense that it would be a good tool for memorizing information as well.
Name mnemonics is also a common one. It uses someone’s name or an item and each letter stands for the first letter of the word you are trying to memorize. One of the best examples of this is Roy G. Biv. Each letter stands for a color which helps me even today remember the colors of the spectrum.
The expression or word mnemonic is the most popularly used mnemonic. It can either be when you replace the first letter of every word you are trying to memorize and replace it with another word that starts with that letter. One that I remember being taught in school is for the order of operations in math. My algebra teacher taught me “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.” The first letter of each word stands for the first letter of each operation and made it much easier for me to remember that. Another possible way to change that is to make an expression that is much simpler and easier to understand.
The model mnemonic is when you make a model in order to help you remember information. I don’t believe I have ever really used this particular technique.
The next mnemonic is the ode or rhyme mnemonic. This technique involves putting information in a poe or rhyming format. One that I remember using when I was younger and that I often find myself saying even today is “I before e except after c.”
Note organization mnemonics involves using note cards, outlines, or the Cornell System (draw line and put question on left and answer or details on the right). Many textbooks are set up in a way that will promote memorization and uses note organization. I utilize notecards often in particular classes and it does seem to be very helpful when attempting to memorize information.
Image mnemonics is another technique that is used by drawing a picture or picturing one in your head that helps you to visualize what you are trying to memorize. This is a particular technique that I don’t believe I have ever really used. It seems like some people that are visual learners may use this more.
The connection mnemonic is when you make certain connections between the information you need to remember and something you already know. One particular sight used longitude and latitude as their example for this. I have always remembered that longitude is North/South because when I picture something long I picture it up and down. That is a connection that I made and it helps me to always remember.
Spelling mnemonics can take the form of a few different things. It seems to partner with other techniques such as image and rhyme in order to be useful. Mostly anything that falls under the category of using a technique to help you spell something correctly is also a spelling mnemonic.
Aside from these basic nine techniques there are a few others that are used often and can be extremely helpful. The method of loci is one that our textbook talks about. It involves a couple different steps. The first step is to go on a mental journey and set specific, significant locations up where you will be able to remember them. It is also important that the locations occur in a natural sequence so that you don’t mess up the order. In the second step you have to create a mental picture of the information you plan on remembering. Then you partner the information with each location. You can’t simply associate each item at each location, but you also need to visualize them together. The last step is to retrieve the information by going on that mental journey and going back and picking up the information that you dropped off at each loci. This technique can be really useful during a long speech that you have to have memorized.
Terminology: Cornell System, ode/rhyme, model, expression/word, image, connection, loci, spelling mnemonics, associate
Mnemonics-Memory Techniques
http://faculty.bucks.edu/specpop/mnemonics.htm
This source gave more details on different types of mnemonics. I chose it before it gave short brief explanations of different mnemonic techniques.
9 Types of Mnemonics for Better Memory
http://www.learningassistance.com/2006/january/mnemonics.html
This source helped a lot with giving good summaries of different techniques. I chose it because it’s information was easy to understand and it does a good job of breaking things down and also using familiar examples that I can relate to.
Method of Loci-Mnemonic Technique
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcIfKkhc6B0
This video gave me more information about the particular method of loci. It helped explain the four steps used for this method and how to go about making this method effective.
This week I was interested in looking up tips to improve your memory. This related to our chapter because our chapter this week was about forgetting and remembering, so my topic of looking up ways to forget less and remember more ties in really well. This topic was interesting to me because as a college student who also works a job nearly full time most weeks, I have a very busy schedule and being able to learn how to remember things more effectively can always come in handy.
A tip that I particularly enjoyed was to exercise in order to help increase your memory ability. The area of your brain that helps with memory is the hippocampus, and people who worked out regularly also consistently had a larger hippocampus, which correlates directly with the ability to form new memories and be less forgetful when you’re trying to recall something later on. I liked this tip because it’s yet another reason to exercise. There are already so many benefits to exercising, and I think it’s great that this is yet another reason to motivate yourself to get on a regular schedule.
Another tip consistent in some findings is that doing activities that challenge your brain helps with memory as well. Activities such as sudoku or crosswords may have potential benefits that strengthen your brain and allow for better recall.
Getting adequate sleep also may definitely help with memory function. Many researchers believe that if you get quality sleep, often deep sleep lasting at least 8 hours, your brain uses this time to transfer information from your short-term memory to your long-term, which would allow you to more effectively recall the information later on than if it had simply remained in your short-term memory.
Something I could really benefit from is attempting to concentrate more on what I’m doing. Often we catch ourselves multi-tasking and not paying attention to where we’re setting our keys or what someone is saying to us. This is especially important when we know the information is more difficult, so if we can train our minds to concentrate more we’re more likely to understand and store the information correctly in our memory.
Speaking out loud something you’d like to remember also appears to helps enter it into your long-term memory. This can range from stating where you’re putting your keys as you set them down so that you’re less likely to forget later, or teaching a topic you’re trying to learn in school to someone else. If you speak the infromation aloud rather than simply thinking it in your mind your brain is making yet another connection with the information and is more likely to properly store it.
A concept that ties in well with our chapter as it was discussed quite a bit is the use of mnemonic devices. Researchers and people who have spent time trying to improve their memory often encourage these uses in order to prompt us to remember something we’d rather not forget. Acronyms and other mnemonic devices can be very helpful and many people use them everyday and believe they help with their memory tremendously.
There are clearly many things we can try to do to improve our memories. Some may require a bit of a lifestyle alteration and other just require alterations of our ways of thinking. However none of them seem impossible for most people to incorporate into our lives, and any way we can try to be a less forgetful society is a great thing to consider!
http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/tp/memory_tips.htm
I liked this site because it listed memory improvement tips and was to the point. It helped with my post by giving me ideas to list and also supporting lists from other sites.
http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/improve-your-memory
I liked this link because it provided many various tips and also explained some of the science behind why these are possible suggestions. It contributed to my post also through giving me tips to discuss as well as also supporting lists from other sites.
http://www.health.com/health/article/0,,20723699_2,00.html
I liked this article because it listed the individual’s personal experiences trying to implement these as well as references to some of the research supporting why she decided to try these memory tricks. It yet again contributed to my post through providing me with improvement tips to talk about and correlate with other sites tips.
This week I decided to look at false memories and learn more about them. This relates to our reading in that false memories were discussed in this chapter and have been talked about in previous class periods we have had. This section really interests me because I think that most people, myself included, want to believe that our memories are accurate. We know that we can forget things, but we find it hard to believe that memories that we have retained and that are clear to us can be false.
False memories are factually incorrect, but are strongly believed. For the person with the false memory, simply telling them that this did not actually occur or showing them proof that their memory is false will not remove the strong feelings that go along with the memory. Most of these false memories have a strong emotion attached to them and that emotion continues to be felt even after the memory has been revealed to be false.
While false memories can occur naturally, many are the result of therapy, hypnosis, or leading/suggestive questioning. Elizabeth Loftus, for example, did research showing that the type of questions that are asked about a situation can change the interpretation of how something happened. She has also seen subject change the color of cars, claim buildings are present where there are none, and broken glass where there was none. This shows how unreliable people's memories can be and how they can be outright wrong.
It appears as if people with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory are susceptible to false memories as well. A study was done where two groups of people (one HSAM and one normal) were given lists and then later asked what words were on the list. All of the words on the list were related to sleep, but sleep was not a word on the list. The majority of people in both groups listed sleep as a word found on the list, as well as other words that were not there. Scientists also told both groups that there was footage of a plane crashing in Pennsylvania on 9/11. Later, subjects in both groups recalled seeing that footage, even though there never was any. This study shows that no one is immune to false memories, even people with amazing memories.
Loftus and her colleague were also able to plant childhood memories into adults of various ages. Researchers had a list of actual memories from the subject's childhood, and simply incorporated one that did not exist: the subject getting lost at the mall that was in the town they grew up in. The setting was accurate to what could have happened, and the other memories were all reliable. This caused the subjects to come to believe that they had been lost in a mall as a child. Subjects were able to describe the person who found them and the emotions that they felt, even though this never actually happened.
People who have found that their false memories have been implanted by mental health professionals often sue for malpractice. One such case was of Nadean Cool. Nadean went to a psychiatrist to help her deal with a traumatic incident that was experienced by her daughter. Cool left these sessions convinced that she has once been involved in a satanic cult. She believed that she had eaten babies, been raped, had sex with animals, and watched her friend be murdered. She also believed that she had more than 120 personalities that took over her mind and body from time to time. Eventually, Cool realized that these memories had been implanted by her psychiatrist through hypnosis and other suggestive techniques. Many cases such as these occurred during the 1980's and early 1990's because of the prevalence of hypnosis and lack of guidelines as to the proper way to ask subjects questions.
http://science.time.com/2013/11/19/remember-that-no-you-dont-study-shows-false-memories-afflict-us-all/
This article talks about how people with HSAM have false memories just like the rest of us.
http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm
This is a website run by Loftus that talks about her work on false memories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory_syndrome
This page talks about the history of false memories and how they can come to be implanted
This week I was really interested in the theories of dreaming. There are many interpretations about dreaming and I wanted to see what research would bring me. I wanted to see what others had to say about dreaming other than the Freudian theory that the book mentioned. I had heard of a man named Hobson that also had some theories of dreaming from previous classes. Dreaming and sleep are very much correlated, so I thought that researching a little more about sleep would be helpful in understanding both of the topics better. I want to learn more about REM sleep and when dreaming actually occurs and what those dreams mean, if they do in fact mean anything at all.
The first article that I found was extremely beneficial in the understanding of dreaming, and also in the understanding of sleep. The theories that the article mentioned was the psychoanalytical theory that Freud had came up with. Feud believed that dreams were repressed thoughts that came out when we were asleep. He also thought that our dreams were desires that came out when we were sleeping. Freud was a strange man that also believed that somehow our sexual desires came out during sleep. In his book the interpretation of dreams he said that there was the manifest content and the latent content. The manifest content were actual images that we have acquired throughout the day. The latent content was the sexual desires that we have repressed and then came out during sleep. Freud had some good theories in his time and it can not be disproven, but many people believe that there are much more credible theories out there. Hobson came up with activation theory that suggested that parts of our brain became more active during dreaming. The limbic system was activated that triggered areas of the brain the dealt with emotion, and those emotions were expressed when we reach REM sleep. I thought that this article was very beneficial in the understanding some of the different theories of dreaming. I was not completely satisfied because I know that there are many more theories, and I want to learn about more.
I next found a very interesting article about the different sleep cycles. I believe that the book mentioned that there were fiver different stages of sleep. The article that I say shad only mentioned that there were four stages of sleep. The first stage is when we are at our most vulnarable to wake up. Outside distraction can happen easily, but this stage only lasts about 5 to 10 minutes. The brain also produces theta waves. The second stage is when brain spindle occur. This stage lasts about 20 minutes and when the body starts to slow down along with the heart rate. The next stage is when the delta stage happens. This is the transition between light sleep to very deep sleep. Bed wetting and sleep walking happen a lot at this stage. The next stage was the most important to my research for this topical blog. The next stage is when most dreaming actually occurs. This is when the rapid eye movement occurs (REM). The REM stage lasts up to 90 minutes, but the stages of REM sleep last longer and longer as you sleep and can last as long as an hour between REM cycles. I thought that this article was informative in the sense that I got to learn a little more about the stages of sleep that were mentioned in the book.
The next article that I looked at had to do with the circadian rhythm. I thought that reading about the circadian rhythm would be helpful in my understanding of sleep and dreaming. I read about a study that was conducted to see if the cycle was 24 hrs long as we have believed for years. A couple of researchers lived in a cave that had no natural light in it. They wanted to see if their rhythms would still correlate to the outside world without the use of clocks or alarms. It turned out that the found out that the human cycle was actually 25 hrs long. What the flaw was with their experiment was that they had the use of electrical light. The turned on the light when the woke up and then turned off the electrical light when they went to bed. What stayed the same was the way their melatonin worked. When the body was tired it would still release the melatonin that it took for one to fall asleep. There was also a section on the effects of drugs on the sleep cycle. Like the book there was not a lot of information on the effects of drugs on the sleep cycle, but what it did say was that cocaine had an effect on the sleep cycle. This was clearly obvious and I wanted to know if there was more information about the topic. I think that I will do some independent research on the topic to see if there is anymore evidence on the effects of drugs on the sleep cycle.
http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/p/dream-theories.htm
This article was very helpful in the understanding of the different theories of dreaming and also a little
about sleep.
http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/a/SleepStages.htm
This article was helpful in the understanding of the sleep cycle. This article mentioned four stages of sleep when the book had stated that there was five, but still informative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm
This article was helpful in the understanding of the circadian rhythm. I thought that it would also be helpful in the understanding of sleep and dreaming as well.
1a) State what your topic is.
This week I looked more into eidetic images.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.This topic was discussed toward the end of the chapter, as it obviously relates to memory.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
Eidetic images are fascinating for a number of reasons to me. I've always wanted to just know everything, and I've heard of photographic memory in the past and I've watched videos of autistic savants drawing cityscapes in full detail from only flying over them one time and I wondered how they did it.
2.
The phenomenon of eidetic images (photographic memories) is characterized by vivid, detailed, mental images. People with photographic memory, or eidetikers, can remember things so well that they actually see them in their head. Eidetikers can remember an unlimited amount of things, indefinitely, with significantly greater accuracy than a normal person. Eidetic memory is an incredibly rare phenomenon, and because of this, little is known about it. It is so rare, in fact, that it's existence is actually a question among the scientific community, but the documented cases of "S" and "Elizabeth" show that there is obviously something different in the minds of these eidetikers. One would assume that there is something structurally different in the brains of people who are capable of these eidetic images, but no neurological studies exist involving them.
A commonly accepted model of memory holds that the first stage is sensory memory. At this stage, sensory experiences are stored very briefly, and are lost entirely unless pushed to other areas of the brain for further analysis. While in sensory memory, visual information is believed to be stored as an actual image. So the theory is that eidetic images are sensory memories that have never left. Memories are believed to be held and strengthened by changes at the neuronal level due to long-term potentiation. This is the theory behind neuroplasticity, where you can change the structure of your brain and thus your way of thinking, by changing what you think about. Lumosity is a widely-advertised company that uses these neuroplasticity-based games, to exercise parts of your brain responsible for focus and memory. Normally, it takes multiple stimulations to strengthen the synapse and increase proficiency. It is conceivable that eidetikers do not require multiple stimulations to retain these images. An interesting area of research exists on eidetic imagery in children.
Children ages 7-14 have been studied in the past and were shown to have eidetic images, although they were somewhat spontaneous and were prone to fading. Very rarely did any semblance of these eidetic images persist into adulthood. I also saw an article about eidetic images existing in insects, although I did not have access to read this article. Another theory about the phenomenon looks at how memory is stored. Generally, visual information is stored in the brain as conceptual information. This is likely due to the information being stored in a manner so it relates to other information and memories you already have. If it is thought of as information being stored visually rather than conceptually, it would make sense that insects and young children have a sort of capability for eidetic images, as their brains don't process information with relation to verbal coding. It is a rather confusing topic that I would love to learn more about, provided some eidetiker comes along and is willing for almost excessive amounts of brain scans and procedures.
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro06/web2/agoldstein.html
This link gave a good overview of eidetic images and posed several theories about how they may work, with relation to sensory memory.
http://mentalimagery.net/eideticimages.html
This link discussed eidetic images in children and cited some other research on the topic.
http://www.eidetictraining.com
This link contained basic information about eidetic images, as well as some sketchy information about how you could learn to develop the ability for these eidetic images
1.A. Evidence for the existence strategic forgetting/motivated forgetting
B. This relates to our text as our book provides a very brief (two sentences) explanation of what motivated forgetting is. The book speaks about its use as a tool for knowingly suppressing traumatic memories. My post will discuss this same topic. In addition it will expand upon that topic by covering neurobiological processes involved with motivated forgetting. The post will also cover motivated forgetting’s relationship to emotional valence of a memory.
C. I am interested in motivated forgetting because of its implications for an individual’s agency. After all, if one truly can eliminate or be mostly successful in memory, it implies we have a certain level of control over at least one cognitive function. Many researchers and theorists have produced research/theories that suggest behavior is strongly influenced by some form of socialization. Socialization likely does play a significant role in influencing some of our behaviors and internal experiences but there are times I feel like humans are viewed as passive recipients that simply soak up all the lessons society/their own socialization teaches them. Motivated forgetting is an example of a construct that entails that humans are not entirely passively being influenced by external forces but potentially have choice about what knowledge they will accept or reject. With repression being so controversial (some believe it is real and others do not) and receiving so much attention I wanted to know more about research related to motivated forgetting. I also wanted to know if the same amount of skepticism for repression is just as warranted in the case of motivated forgetting.
In my first source multiple studies are cited supporting the existence of motivated forgetting in survivors of sexual abuse. In addition it hypothesizes reasons one may be motivated to forget these memories. Theoretically it does not seem entirely dubious to think that forgetting some memories would be beneficial for mental health or that being motivated to forget something is unreasonable. There is support for motivated forgetting in cases of sexual abuse, but this first source begs many questions. Two such questions are if the field of neuropsychology can lend some amount of credence to the findings of researchers and is this constructs influence only present with respect to traumatic memories?
The second question is an important one. Unlike many other memories one may possess, a traumatic experience would likely be something with a strong emotionally negative valence. My second source provides evidence that both words with a positive and neutral emotional valence can in fact be forgot if one is motivated to forget something. Though repression and motivated thinking are different in that repression involves unconsciously forgetting as opposed to conscious efforts to forget, one may not feel overwhelmed with confidence for these findings. Forgetting traumatic memories is a topic that has generated much debate and cause one to feel skepticism about any theory related to forgetting traumatic memories, even if it can apply to less negatively valenced memories.
If a neurological investigation into to this matter found evidence of a neurological/biological process by which one strategically forgets something, this would be great support for arguments that assert motivated forgetting is real. My third source makes use of an fMRI and is able to provide evidence that helps researchers understand what areas of the brain are involved in strategically forgetting. There is a potential that in studies such as the one from the second source, some third variable/s could have influenced participants performance on memory tasks, for example demand characteristics. This third source and its supporting evidence is important because individuals presumably can not influence certain functions such as which parts of the brain display more or less activation during an experiment.
http://www.uic.edu/labs/pll/epstein-bottoms-2002-CM.PDF Repression and motivated forgetting seem to me to be more well known for their place in discussions about forgetting trauma or recovering memories. As such, I felt it would be appropriate to begin with a discussion about research in this area.
https://www2.bc.edu/elizabeth-kensinger/Murray_PA11.pdf The second source allowed me to present evidence of motivated forgetting being possible for memories with any or no emotional valence. I felt that demonstrating that motivated forgetting can appear in with respect to multiple memories instead of just extremely negative ones made it more convincing that motivated forgetting exists. For example a possible reason for forgetting childhood sexual abuse that was provided in the first source was related to simply not speaking about abuse as much as other topics while growing up. This helps refute some of those arguments.
http://authorsmania.com/UploadedFiles/a44af467a2cdf4fc5ba580eb1c8676cd_Neural%20systems%20Underlying%20the%20Suppression%20of%20Unwanted%20Memories.pdf Another criticism one could have (as in almost any study) is that methodological flaws and third variables make the results of these articles questionable. I felt that people tend to have confidence in neuroimaging techniques and would have less criticisms related to malingering if I provided some type of biological/neurological evidence for motivated forgetting.
1) Korsakoff’s Syndrome was mentioned in chapter 7 which talked about the different types of amnesia and mentioned Alzheimer’s, as well as Korsakoff’s syndrome which can lead to forgetting. I have previously learned a bit about this syndrome, but I was unable to do any real research on it.
2) Korsakoff’s syndrome is a brain disorder that is highly correlated with heavy alcohol consumption over a long period of time. How does alcoholism lead to Korsakoff’s syndrome? Alcohol becomes more important than food, in the most severe cases, which food has many of the essential vitamins our bodies need. Quite often many binge drinkers tend to throw up therefore leading to less chance for the body to absorb these essential vitamins. Korsakoff’s syndrome is directly linked with a thiamine deficiency. Vitamin B1 is involved in several body functions, including nervous system and muscle functioning, carbohydrate metabolism and production of hydrochloric acid. Thiamine is a vitamin with little storage in the body, therefore depletion can occur within 14 days. The lack of this essential vitamin B1 can lead to severe deficiency with potential complications in the nervous system, brain, muscles, heart and gastrointestinal system.
Korsakoff’s syndrome is part of a condition known as Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome and consists of these two separate but related stages. Wernicke’s encephalopathy followed by Korsakoff’s syndrome. Wernicke’s causes brain damage in the thalamus and hypothalamus. To diagnose Wernicke’s in a heavy drinker, two of the following symptoms must be present: evidence of malnutrition, involuntary and jerky eye movements or paralysis of the muscles that move the eyes, poor balance or unsteadiness, and disorientation, confusion, or mild memory loss. If this is a suspected syndrome, immediate treatment with thiamine can reverse the symptoms within a couple of days.
Wernicke’s syndrome, if left under or untreated, may lead to Korsakoff’s syndrome. Korsakoff’s syndrome develops slowly, with damage happening deep within the brain, causing severe short term memory loss. That being said, the main symptom of this syndrome is memory loss after onset of the condition; with some even losing older memories. Other symptoms associated with the syndrome are: difficulty in retaining new information or skills, hallucinations, extreme changes in personality, lack of insight into the condition and confabulation.
1 in 8 alcoholics thought to have the disorder. Men are the most likely to be affected, especially between the ages of 45 and 65, but it is possible to see this syndrome at younger and older ages. Women, while not as likely to have the disorder, do seem to have symptoms at an earlier age. One of the issues surrounding getting a true and accurate diagnosis, is that the individual must stop drinking for several weeks, to let the body detox and get over the initial withdrawal symptoms.
Unlike some of the other dementias, Korsakoff’s syndromes symptoms can be reversed or slowed, if caught in time. High doses of thiamine intravenously, abstaining from alcohol, and a healthy diet can halt the symptoms. Heavy alcohol use also can cause other types of dementia and can even lead to Alzheimer’s. Dementia that is directly or indirectly related to the heavy abuse of alcohol is termed alcoholic dementia, as alcohol can cause damage to nerve cells and blood vessels, resulting in brain shrinkage. Indirectly, those that drink excessively are at a higher risk for head injuries, through falls and fights. Many of the symptoms associated with Korsakoff’s are seen in alcoholic dementia. Because of this symptom overlap, there are experts that argue alcoholic dementia is often misdiagnosed and/or a part of the Korsakoff syndrome. Both are associated with thiamine deficiencies and are treated with B1.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/vitamin-b1/NS_patient-thiamin
Informed me about the importance of vitamin B1 in our body
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000771.htm
This website provided signs and symptoms of Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome.
http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=98
Provided several pieces of information about Korsakoff syndrome.
1a) State what your topic is.
The topic I am doing more research on is Clive Wearing.
1b) Discuss how the topic relates to the chapter.
Clive Wearing was mentioned in the chapter but they did not go into much detail about it. I would like to learn more about how his memory affected his life.
1c) Discuss why you are interested in it.
I am interested how this affected personal aspects of his life. I am also interested in learning more information about how having Herpes affected his memory.
2) Next, we would like you to take the information you read or viewed related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about the topic in a knowledgeable manner.
Clive Wearing was an English musician and musicologist. In March of 1985, Wearing was in his mid-forties and was struck by Herpes encephalitis, a brain infection. This especially affected his memory. After being affected by this, he was left with a memory span of only a few seconds, which was the most devastating case of amnesia ever recorded. If he blinked, he was unable to remember the view he saw before the blink. Most of Clive’s past was also deleted from his memory. Clive, desperate to hang on to something, started to keep a journal. The journal he kept consisted of statements such as, “I am awake”, and “This time properly awake”. Each journal entry would cancel out the last one. This journal showed how lost he was.
One morning, Clive Wearing could not remember his name or answer a simple question. The doctors said it was the flu and a lack of sleep that was causing the confusion so he gave him a bottle of sleeping pills. Wearing’s wife went to work because Wearing assumed the sleeping pills would knock him out for hours. When she got back from work he was not in his bed. A taxi driver found him that night. When he finally got to the hospital, the doctors were unsure of what was wrong with him. 11 hours later, the doctors diagnosed him with encephalitis. He did not remember his past anymore. His life with his wife changed dramatically. He would pick his wife and swing her around because he remembered that he loved her but when he stopped spinning her he would look at her and exclaim, “I can see you now” like it was something new. This event changed his life with his wife dramatically because they couldn’t even sleep in the same room together because when he would wake up he would wonder who the shape was in the bed next to him.
One of the things I found most interesting was that Clive was still able to play the piano after he lost his memory. I thought the video I watched was amazing because he was comfortable sitting with his wife but he could not remember any of the questions she was asking him. One thing from the video, that I thought was crazy was that he said that he had never seen a human being and that he had never seen a doctor before. My favorite thing about his story is something I have mentioned a few times already. I love that he loved his wife and no matter what, he never forgot that he loved his wife. I think the best example of this was in the video I watched. Wearing was being interviewed and his wife walked in the room and he got so excited to see her like he had not seen her in a long time.
3) At the end of your post, please include working URLs for the three websites. For each URL you have listed indicate why you chose the site and the extent to which it contributed to your post.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/09/24/070924fa_fact_sacks?currentPage=all
I chose to use this source because it gave me great information on Clive Wearing’s incident.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3313452/The-man-who-keeps-falling-in-love-with-his-wife.html
I liked using this source because it was interesting to see how Wearing’s memory loss affected his personal life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwigmktix2Y
This video was the best source that I found because it showed an interview with Clive. This was the most helpful because it showed how Clive really felt and how he acted which I thought was interesting.
1.
a. This week I chose to look into a topic that interested me when I came across it in the chapter, and that is retrograde amnesia. I chose this because it is about forgetting the past and making new ones.
b. This chapter is all about memories and how they are kept or forgotten. Memories are important and having them is a very special thing be able to remember the past because not all people can remember the past, so don’t take for granted that you can remember what you can, because one day you may lose all those precious memories that you don’t always think about but you do have.
c. Retrograde amnesia is about forgetting about your past, sometimes small parts and sometimes large parts of your past, or even all of your past. You can make new memories, but all the memories that you had made are gone for the duration of what the retrograde amnesia has taken away. My past is quite fuzzy, so I want to be able to see things that could be why I have issues remembering my own past. The thing that I really remember as one of the first things I can recall of my memory is waking up on the cement at school not knowing what I was doing there and where I really was. I remember being picked up by another student and taken to the teacher, before that was black.
2. Retrograde amnesia (RA) causes are under investigation, although it is very common in head injury and head trauma. RA can be caused by Korsakoff syndrome and people suffering from anterograde amnesia. Having suffered SEVERAL concussions in my life I personally understand head trauma, very well. Now, looking through all the information some of this topic seems quite daunting because there are so many types of RA that can affect you. Partial and full memory loss is seen as parts of RA. RA can affect both semantic and episodic memories which means that fact and past are effected my RA and that can really mess up your memory system. Though RA is known to effect episodic memory then semantic memory. There are things that are still a mystery to what really happens to the brain RA. The doctors that are looking into RA are finding cases that are from trauma that are small traumas that are making the memory system have very large memory losses. Small traumas such as running into another team member and having no signs as to having issues with your brain to quickly going to knowing absolutely nothing about your past is what RA can do to you. RA would be very hard to deal with because you have to relearn all the things that you have already learned and that means having a very great support group that is with you all the way of people that really love you and won’t leave you because you are experiencing some challenges. There are things that would be hard because you have no clue to why you have the RA, life will become more difficult because those memories are definitely gone from your ability to recall them. There are things that stop your brain from accessing your long term memories from the period before the trauma. Life is hard enough with what we have to remember, sometimes it is good to forget things that you have been though, but to lose good and bad isn’t worth losing all those memories. Memories keep us running, the things that we can remember that are good in our lives. I don’t really know what I would do if I lost all the memories that I now have. Those are very special to me and what I believe in. I hope that no one that I know or even I get retrograde amnesia.
3. http://www.jneurosci.org/content/18/10/3943.long --- this was a very informational cite that I found and I really like it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrograde_amnesia#Causes --- this has some great information on RA that was very helpful to my blog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv4SJN016hQ – a simple concussion can cause what this girl went through and I have had many concussion.
1. I chose to research the mnemonic technique the method of loci. This topic related to the second half of this weeks chapter about remembering. This technique allows for people to form better and stronger memories of things such as lists of things and or numbers. Mnemonic techniques help to improve the storage and the recall of things that are encoded into our long term memory. I wanted to research this topic because while reading about it in the book I had a hard time picturing and understanding how this technique would be helpful in remembering a list of items or numbers that do not connect to one another. After reading the additional information I now have a better idea of how this technique works and saw first hand that it truly does work after going through a simulation online with the youtube video that I watched.
2. The term loci refers to the term location. The method of loci uses visualization of a particular route or structure in which the various locations throughout are used to organize and recall desired information. This technique is also known as forming a memory palace due to the fact that a popular structure used in this method is a house of some sort that you take a journey through. Once a structure is encoded into our memories and the specific parts are encoded as well we are able to take this structured information and use it to better organized what would alone be unstructured information. Each part of the structure gets assigned one piece of the structured information. In order for this technique it is vital that each piece of information is connected in some way. For this to happen you create a story that takes you through the structure and has a stop at each location including the piece of information you want to remember. The more vivid and distinct the story the better it will be remembered. The story does not have to be logical, actually the stranger the story the more likely it will stick out in your memory. One drawback of this technique is that you can not pick out just one piece of information from the middle of the story alone, you must go through the series of steps of the story in order to get to the wanted specific piece of information. One suggested way to get around this is to place distinguished marks for every fifth step that may allow you to start the story from that point and take short cut to the desired information.
It is said that the method of loci originates back to ancient times of the Greeks. They would use this mnemonic technique in order to give long speeches, learn and pass on history, and simply to learn and retain all of the knowledge that they could. Unlike today, they did not have the vast amount of knowledge in easy access to them at any moment in time. Evolutionary psychology has proposed that the reason this technique works is due to the fact that having a strong spatial memory was a trait that was important for survival. This memory would have served to be much more beneficial than a memory that was strong in remember lists of unconnected words and series of numbers. Many say that this mnemonic memory technique is one of the most systems known today. I could not find any information telling me exactly why this technique worked or how the brain functions during its use but I was able to understand some parts of the brain that are thought to involved. fMRIs have shown that areas known to be involved for spatial awareness like the medial parietal cortex, retrosplenial cortex, and the posterior hippocampus are involved during this technique.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
This website gave a basic background to where the method of loci came about and how it is used to enhance memory ability.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdfUaydquXs
This video explains why this mnemonic technique allows for us to form better memories out of unstructured things. It also walks you through how you create your own method of loci with a list of groceries given. It was helpful to go through the process and allowed me to see first hand how much it helps.
http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/nervous-system/how-to-improve-your-memory7.htm
This website also gives an example of how to use this method as well as explains ways to make it more efficient to overcome some of the drawbacks that come with the method.
The topic that I researched this week was amnesia in all of its forms. Amnesia relates to the chapter because it was mentioned in it and the subject itself was discussed, as it has everything to do with memory loss. I'm interested in the topic because it is represented a lot in various works of fiction, so many people have been exposed to it and I always like to know just how accurately the movies, tv shows, books, etc. portray various illnesses within the realm of psychology. Amnesia is also a topic that is brought up in a lot of psychology classes, with some focusing it on it more than others of course. I've often wondered what it would be like to experience any type of amnesia as well and I figured researching the topic and some well-known case studies of people with the affliction could shed some light on the subject.
Amnesia is a general term for memory loss to a degree uncommon in normal, everyday life. There are two main types of amnesia: retrograde and anterograde. There are also many causes of the affliction. Many kinds of amnesia can be associated with damage to a specific brain region, namely the hippocampus and its surrounding/related areas. This is due to the region's function in the encoding, storage and retrieval of various memories. The typical causes of amnesia are lesions to the brain from a major accident or a neurological disease such as Alzheimer's. It can also be caused by stress or overabundant alcohol consumption. Most cases of amnesia are temporary but some are longer lasting or even permanent.
As mentioned previously, there are two main types of amnesia. The first I will discuss is retrograde amnesia, as this is the type that most people think of. Retrograde amnesia is the inability to recall past events in one's life that occurred prior to whatever caused the affliction. The most common cause of retrograde amnesia is damage to the temporal lobe or the prefrontal cortex. It typically causes a deficit in episodic memory but not semantic memory, meaning that subjects can't recall past events but can still read, drive a car, and perform other various daily routines and habits. An interesting effect of retrograde amnesia is that older memories are typically easier to recall over time than newer memories formed more recently to the time of the accident or other cause of the affliction. This is explained through the fact that newer memories are less strong than older memories, which are strengthened over time by their constant storage and retrieval to and from long-term memory.
The second main type of amnesia is anterograde amnesia, which is the more interesting of the two in my opinion. Anterograde amnesia is the opposite of retrograde amnesia, to put it simply. It involves the inability to create new, lasting memories while maintaining the ability to recall past events before the trauma. It is typically caused by damage to the hippocampus or medial temporal lobe though trauma to the head such as a concussion. The condition results from the inability to encode new memories for storage in long-term memory and causes subjects to forget events that just happened after shifting their attention. This typically results in repeating things or greeting people after having already done so. An interesting thing in anterograde amnesia is the retention of the ability to learn new skills and habits, although the declarative memory of having done so is still lost. This is because while declarative memory is reliant on the hippocampus/medial temporal lobe, procedural memory is not.
There are also many other minor types of amnesia, all of which are also interesting. There are a good amount of famous cases displaying both retrograde and anterograde amnesia, one of which is the case of H.M., which all psychology students have heard of at one point. After reading through some of the cases, I'm still fascinated by the thought of what it must be like to live with something such as amnesia, especially anterograde amnesia.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/9673.php
This site was a good overview of amnesia and its various types and causes.
http://www.human-memory.net/disorders_amnesia.html
Also a good overview of the topic as a whole and led me to my other two sources, which are from the same website.
http://www.human-memory.net/disorders_retrograde.html
This gives a more detailed description of retrograde amnesia and its specific causes.
http://www.human-memory.net/disorders_anterograde.html
And this give a detailed description for the anterograde flavor of amnesia.
What we would like you to do is to find a topic from this week's chapter that you were interested in and search the internet for material on that topic.
Please be sure to use at least 3 quality resources. If you use videos, please limit it to one video.
Once you have completed your search and explorations we would like you to:
1) The topic I chose is extraordinary memory. This topic was briefly discussed in the chapter and I found it interesting and wanted to learn more about it. I have also heard a little about it in my Memory class.
2) Extraordinary memory is sometimes also called hyperthymesitic or hyperthymestic syndrome. Extraordinary memory is where a person has a great autobiographical memory. The episodic memory can also be enhanced. This is different from savant memory. Savant memory is where a person have extraordinary memory in specific hobbies and tend to be more narrowly based. A couple different characteristics that people with this have is : spending much time thinking about their pasts, and they also have an unusual amount of capacity to remember and recall certain events, details, dates, the weather, and what people were wearing in their past experiences. The person’s “mental calendar” is an obsessive and an automatic process. Eidetic memory is where people are able to remember a large quantity and accurately recall images.
There was a case with a person called “AJ” who had hyperthymesitic memory and she had issues consciously applying her memory strategies to help her memorize the new information she was learning. So her memorization abilities were considered to be below the average level. According to Wikipedia, there are six known cases of hyperthymesitic known worldwide. There was another individual known by Kim Peek who has memorized 7600 books. A numeric memory found was where a man was able to figure Pi to 22,514 didgets. I watched a show about a man who had autism and was able to memorize Rome from in a helecoptor, which he had never seen before and then drew perfectly all the buildings, stories, in order with window detail, and shapes perfectly. It was amazing.
One of the issues that can happen with hyperthymesitic is that the past is constantly playing with the present. People have reported migraines, and it is thought that AJ’s stemmed from a traumatic event in her child hood which caused her to organize her memories. Other drawbacks that have been found is anxiety, long periods of depression, and insomnia.
Terms: recall, extraordinary memory, savant memory, eidetic memory, depression, insomnia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceptional_memory
I chose this website, because it told about the different types of extraordinary memory there is.
https://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/professional/savant-syndrome/resources/articles/hyperthymestic-syndrome-extraordinary-memory-for-daily-life-events/
This website gave some cases of extraordinary memory.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/quirks-memory/201301/people-extraordinary-autobiographical-memory
This website talked about the AJ case some more.
1. My topic will be extraordinary memory.
2. The chapter details information about the processes of forgetting and remembering and includes cases of people who have the extreme ability to remember certain things accurately even after long amounts of time have passed.
3. For most of us we have to work hard to store certain types of information, but for others it is very easy. People who have these extraordinary memories often use different techniques called mnemonics that allow them to easily store information into their LTM. There are different types of extraordinary memory. One type is called hyperthymesia in where a person has a very superior autobiographical memory, which is memory that forms people’s life stories. These people often are diagnosed with a syndrome of the same name and spend a lot of time dwelling on their pasts and can remember even the most trivial of information from their past. A man by the name of Brad Williams, also named the “Human Google”, was recognized by national media for having this type memory. He could recall any day of his life in great detail and also innumerable trivial facts. He is one of about 20 identified people with this syndrome. Another type of extraordinary memory is called eidetic memory, which includes being able to precisely recall not only pictures but sounds. There is also a type of extraordinary memory called emotional memory or flashbulb memory, which is the ability to accurately recall a vivid and emotional even, such as 9-11, with amazing detail. There is also the familiar savant memory capabilities wherein a person with intellectual disorder has the ability to remember things such as specific dates or can repeat any song or movie quote he’s ever heard. People with extraordinary memories are the interest of many case studies in psychology. A women by the name Kim Peek was able to memorize 7600 books (Factual memory), a man Daniel Tammet memorized Pi to 22,514 digits! A lot of the people that have been studied are what we would deem as savants, but people with extraordinary memory don’t always have to be. As we have learned with people who master certain skills there are ways for ordinary people to remember extraordinary amounts of information, and that is through mnemonics. Mnemonics are just different techniques used in the retrieval of information, such as association. It is said that people have two types of memory, natural memory and artificial memory. Mnemonic strategy is said to develop our artificial memory through learning and practicing techniques. Some think having good memory is something you’re born with, but evidence is starting to prove that through practice of these mnemonic devices people can train themselves to also have extraordinary memories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exceptional_memory
This website was very helpful in that it listed the different types of exceptional memory abilities and gave detailed examples.
https://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/professional/savant-syndrome/resources/articles/hyperthymestic-syndrome-extraordinary-memory-for-daily-life-events/
This website gave specific examples of individuals with exceptional memories and explained the difference between savants and mnemonisists.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s6OMYdVUZE
Funny video of the “Human Google” Brad Williams demonstrating he exceptional abilities.
Topical Blog Chapter 7
Chapter 7 is all about forgetting. There are multiple ways a person can forget or not recall some sort of information. There are also ways that people can have false memories. On the opposite of that, some people have extraordinary memories. The part of this chapter that I found the most interesting was the information about false memories. When someone has a false memory, they think that something happened to them, but it really didn’t. They might think that they were in a certain place or with a certain person, when they really were not. I think that false memories are interesting because these people are literally “remembering” something that never happened! It has been proven that false memories can easily be installed into a person’s mind as well. This bit of information is also very interesting to me – and it is what I would like to look into first.
One of the main reasons that false memories have become such a big deal in the mental health field is because people have been leaving therapy and accusing others of neglect, abuse, and many other things that never happened. A therapist, or even a researcher, can plant false memories by asking leading questions. They can also plant a false memory by giving the patient small, broad details of an event that never happened. As time passes, the person will make this false memory grow. They will start to add personal details that they claim to remember. But these things never happened. This is not a good thing at all because people are starting to be blamed for crimes against others that they never committed. The therapist might think that they are helping this person to draw out repressed memories. But in reality, they are planting false memories in this person that could cause even deeper damage.
Repressed memories are usually very traumatic memories that people push to the back of their mind. The memories are still there, but the people will push them very far back into their subconscious memory and block them. These people do this so that they don’t have to deal with the hurt and the stress of the memory. There are a lot of therapists that will try to retract these memories from their patients. The therapists probably want to do this in order to help the patients have a healthier mind. It’s not good to repress memories, so therapists will bring them to light and force the patients to face them. The problem with this is that sometimes there may not even be a repressed memory. If the therapist is wrong, they will end up creating a false memory instead of recalling a repressed memory.
The problem with therapists trying to recall repressed memories is that they might accidentally install a false memory. Some psychologists think that repressed memories don’t even exist. Some say that people who go through traumatic events don’t repress the memory, in fact, they have a hard time forgetting it. So when a therapist uses hypnosis or other forms of therapy to recall a person’s repressed memory, they might be harming the person by planting a false memory by mistake. False memories are much more harmful because the person strongly believes that this memory is real and that this event actually happened. So since there is a problem with knowing whether a memory is repressed or not, we need to know how to tell if someone has a false memory. If a person had a repressed memory, they might be able to be helped. But if they have a false memory, that poses as more of a problem.
False memories are created by combining pieces of real memories with suggested things that happened (even though they really didn’t). False memories can be planted by someone else, or they can be planted by the person that has them. If another person plants a false memory in a person, it might be accidental. They might just use suggestive sentences when talking to the other person. Someone might also implant a false memory by themselves. There are a lot of examples about people thinking they were at parties when they weren’t. If someone was home sick, and they couldn’t make it to a party, why would they think that they were there? This person who had to stay home sick probably heard many stories about the party after it happened. They have heard so many in depth stories over and over about this party, they start to think that they were there. I think that false memories cause a real problem in the lives of the people who have them, and the people that the false memories are about.
Terms: False Memories, Repressed Memories, Recall, Forgetting, Extraordinary Memories
URLs:
http://cogprints.org/599/1/199802009.html
I didn’t draw much information from this website. But it did have some good information on different court cases that involved false memories that were posing as repressed memories. This website explains the danger in false memories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory_syndrome
I chose this website because it contained great information about false memories, repressed memories, and why they can be confused.
http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm
There was a lot of good information on certain cases where people had false memories on this website. There were a lot of different examples of false memories and how they were implanted.
This week’s chapter focused on forgetting and mentioned both retrograde amnesia and anterograde amnesia. I chose to look into anterograde amnesia because that’s a lot of what you see portrayed in the movies. The best example of this is of course 50 First Dates, however they don’t portray it quite right. The first important thing about anterograde amnesia (AA) is that for most people this condition is very temporary. All amnesia occurs right around some kind of traumatic event or accident, and in the case of AA it is that you are unable to recall the events following the accident. In most cases, you wouldn’t remember the first few doctor or family visits while you were in the hospital. Naturally with all things there is a spectrum, in this case there really only extremes.
This is where 50 First Dates messes it up, she remembers all of the events of each day, then every new day she starts clean. This is unrealistic because AA is a condition of the STM, and not many people realize just how short the STM is. For those who have lifelong AA, their daily lives are far different from the heroine in 50 First Dates. Clive Wearing is a man who has absolutely no memory. This is of course not true, he only believes that he has no memory, the reality is that he has no STM so he hasn’t made any new memories in over twenty years. He lives his life in a very unstructured way, and keeps a constant journal of his thoughts. He describes waking up in the morning with no memory of the last day, and most of us might feel like this at first, however as we become more and more awake we recall where we are and what we are supposed to do and so forth. For Mr. Wearing his awakening each morning is like coming back to life, he has no new memories and therefore can’t draw on anything to orient himself in his surroundings. Mr. Wearing’s condition is a result of brain surgery where they removed part of his hippocampus for the purpose of reducing his seizures.
While accidents are the most popular cause of amnesia, they can happen in a number of other ways, Mr. Wearing being an example of the second most common. A third that I found interesting was extreme intake of alcohol in a short period of a time, also known as a black out. What’s happening here is that because alcohol blocks the brain’s ability to code new memories, while the event is happening you’ll remember the girl’s name you met at the party, however when you wake up the next day and she’s in your bed, you won’t even recognize her. Your brain never made that LTM, so there is no memory for you to draw from. Another alcohol related amnesia that is far more long term than a black out is due to heavy alcohol use over a number of years. In this case, the alcohol is slowly breaking down your brain’s ability to code a condition known as Korsakoff’s disease.
There is also a wide array of drugs both pharmaceutical and recreational that have amnesia effects. Most of these result in an AA situation where you are unable to recall events that occurred while you were on the drug, however once the drug has run its course and been metabolized then the brain goes on coding STM into LTM as it always did. However, much like alcohol over long periods of time they will break down your brain’s ability to encode new memories all together.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia
This link gave me a lot of general information on what AA is and how it occurs.
http://www.simplypsychology.org/anterograde-amnesia.html
This site gave me more psychology related information on AA, specifically the brain functions normally and with AA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ObnErfTblY
This video is an interview with Clive Wearing, the man with no memory, and helped me to understand what even a short AA episode might be like.