Amnesia...Wait, What Is It Called Again?

         So, we're halfway done with the AP Psych textbook and we've come to learn about memory. Memory is a seemingly complex process, with different components and models. The first thing to know about memory is that it takes place in three stages: encoding, storage, and retrieval. 

         The three models of memory include ideas from Atkinson and Shiffrin- there is sensory memory, which is fleeting and takes place when there is sensation but no perception, short-term memory which is encoding through rehearsal, and long-term memory, which is storage for later retrieval. These models represent basic, simple memory and the whole idea all together is very static and passive- either you store the information or it's forgotten. This type of memory is very limited. 

         Unlike the static system described above, working memory has do with a more active system that is dynamic, but limited (though not as much as sensory memory). Working memory is in place of short-term memory. Baddeley's model is an explanation of what is involved in working memory. This model includes the central executive, which controls attention, the phonological loop, which has to do with language, the visuo-spatial sketchpad, which stores visual and spatial information, and the episodic buffer, which processes events. Connectionism revolves around the idea that there are interconnected neural networks that are involved in storage and allow for specific memories to come out of particular activation patterns. For instance, you recall experiences associated with a specific object. 

         Both types of memory have a limited amount of space, because we can only process 7 pieces of information into memory at a time, give or take 2. In working memory, we need to focus our attention on certain aspects so that we can keep them in our memory. 

         So that is how memory is stored, but while learning this I was more interesting to learn about memory failures like amnesia. Though we haven't discussed it yet, I decided to look it up on my own. According to medicalnewstoday.com, amnesia is when people lose their ability to memorize data. It also refers to the inability to recall information that has already been stored. According to this website, there can be organic or functional causes of amnesia. Organic causes can include brain damage through injury or the use of drugs, usually sedatives. Amnesia can also be one of the symptoms of diseases like Alzheimer's. Functional causes are psychological factors, like defense mechanisms. 

         There are many, many types of amnesia, though the one I want to discuss is traumatic amnesia. Not to get all drama-llama up in here, but in 5th grade I fell off my bike (looking back, I see that I tend to fall or jump off moving vehicles with wheels, but I actually fell this time, I didn't jump) and I got amnesia. Ever since then, I've thought that amnesia was just forgetting stuff, but I actually had a specific type, called traumatic amnesia. This is caused by a hard blow to the head and is usually found in people who have been in car accidents. People with this type of amnesia can experience a brief loss of consciousness or even go into a coma, but in the majority of cases, this amnesia is temporary. How long it lasts usually depends on how sever the injury is. Some scientists say that amnesia is an important indicator of a concussion. 

         Thankfully, I didn't go into a coma and my amnesia was obviously temporary, but I think it's interesting to see how this has to do with memory. 

Link to full article: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/9673.php

      

Remembering

I remember as a little kid, when we used to live by Anshei and my family and I would occasionally stay Shabbat at my Grandmother's house so we could go to Baron Hirsch sometimes. Since I was younger, I needed something that would aways entertain me. We used to play with puzzles or memory card games. I remember when we would play the memory games, I would be really good at it. My grandmother and my mother would always tell me how good my memory was and how good I was at the game.

Now, I still think that I have a good memory. I know that I am really good at remembering birthdays, numbers, and names. It kind of seems really creepy. Sometimes when I have memorized someone's birthday after them only telling me once, they will think that I am a creeper for knowing it, but I think it's just because I can remember numbers pretty easily.

Then, there are those memories that I remember vividly happening. I see those events as part of my childhood. When I ask my parents about the memory, they say that never happened and I get confused. It seemed like it was something that could happen and when I am told that it never happened it just doesn't seem right. 

Also, when I was a kid, I remember having a certain dream that I remember until this day. I think that I remember it because it was a semantic dream. I remember the dream with detail. The dream was that I was at this zoo type thing and there was a pool with baby sharks and I remember that my mom threw me in that pool and walked away. I remember having the dream and I know that I did have the dream. Since it was so long ago, I'm not sure if I got the details fully correct. It is kind of frustrating to not be able to remember all the things that happened at an event and our mind just puts pieces into a memory and throws out some and adds some, but you can never truly know if your memory is exact. 

Eidetic Memory

In many of the world's most beloved movies and TV series, there is that one character whose intelligence really stands out. In Criminal Minds, it's Dr. Spencer Reid. In Star Trek, it's Mr. Spock. In Gilmore Girls, it's Rory Gilmore. In X-Men, it's Professor Charles Xavier. What do all of these people have in common? Apart from having beyond-average intelligence, all of these characters also claim to have eidetic memories. Eidetic memory is the ability to recall sights, sounds, or objects in memory with great precision, and is not required through mnemonics.  This phenomenon is also known as photographic memory or total recall.

Although I introduced the list of people above as having over-average intelligence, eidetic memory and intelligence are not actually connected. This ability is mostly found in children below age 6. However after age 6, the ability for "total recall" is often lost. The people I listed above, despite the fact that they are fictional characters, have managed to maintain this ability well into adulthood. Additionally, it is important to note that eidetic memory is a process that applies to long-term memory. Once the information enters the working memory, the person has an easier time encoding all of that information. For example, a person with eidetic memory would be able to remember large amounts of literature that was read to him/her or that he/she once read. Again, this information is not "rehearsed" in the sense that the person does not consciously try to retain all of that information at once.

This all sounds great on paper, but psychologists have a really hard time deciding if this is a true phenomenon or not. Some psychologists, including Martin Minsky, claim that this phenomenon is just a myth. One particular test stands out among the rest. in 1970, Charles Stromeyer conducted an experiment on his fiance in which he had her recall poetry in a foreign language that she did not understand. The poetry held no semantic meaning to her, so her recollection of it was attributed to eidetic memory. The fiance, known as Elizabeth, was also able to recall complex dot patterns and combine the patterns into one image. To date, she is the only person to have passed such a test. While this experiment seems great, there are some loopholes. First, Elizabeth refused to repeat the experiment. Second, the scientist married the subject, making the whole experiment seem a bit skewed.

What do you think? Is eidetic memory real? 

For all of the Sheldon Cooper fans out there, look what I found!

Creepy déjà vu!

Ever had that weird feeling that what you saying or doing already happened once. It happens to me all the time and it creeps me out. I will be in a store that I have never gone to or talking to someone about something completely random and this weird feeling comes over me. The feeling that this already happened. That I have been there before. That I have talked about this to her already. But I know I didn't and it bothers me to no end. So when something like bothers you, you research it and see if its a normal thing. Like when you have a cold and you research your symptoms and it tells you, you have diabetes and will die in the next month. When I researched déjà vu I found a few answers to why we experience it. Not many made sense but one kind of did.
The concept of déjà vu has been around for a while. The french word itself mean "all ready been seen". While there are many different theory and reason given they all do not make sense and have been disproved. All but one.
There is a theory that déjà vu is linked with are memory. It is kind of like flashbulb memory-  When something triggers a bad or great experience you had. The older you get the more likely it is to experience déjà vu. Everything that has ever happened to us is stored in are brain. There are many things though that can trigger those memories to come out of storage. If you are doing something that you have never done before there can be a stimulus there that you don't even consciously realize is there that triggers your brain of something that already happened. That gives you the feeling of I have already been here or said that. The brain is triggering something that is already stored but not fully taking it out. So you don't remember then fully what happened but you just feel like you have experienced something already.
Have you ever experienced déjà vu?
Do you think this theory makes sense?
Do you know of any better theories?

Hyperthymesia and Memory Distortion

How do we remember information? How memory works is often analogized to a computer’s information-processing system. To remember any event, we must get the information into our brain through the process of encoding, or the processing of information into the memory system, retain the information over time through storage, and later get it back out, through retrieval. A computer also encodes, stores, and retrieves information. First, it translates input (keystrokes) into an electronic language, much as the brain encodes sensory information into a neural language. The computer permanently stores vast amounts of information on a drive, from which it can later be retrieved.

But, imagine being able to recall every moment of your entire life, beginning around age 10. UC Irvine neuroscientists James McGaugh and Larry Cahill studied people with this type of phenomenal memory, hyperthymesia. Their first scientific paper in 2006 consisted of a study about a woman nicknamed AJ (Jill Price), who had hyperthymesia. Hyperthymesia, also known as highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), is a condition in which one can remember astonishing details about every single day of their life going back to childhood. Given any specific date in the last few decades, Brad Williams can remember both what he did that day and what significant world events occurred. Bob Petrella can recall the date he met every one of his friends and associates. Jill Price can remember the day that any episode of any TV show she’s ever seen first aired—including, in a handful of cases, that day’s weather.

“Researchers have previously found that memories can be distorted in every group they’ve looked at: in the young, the old, those with high intelligence and those with low intelligence,” Lawrence Patihis, a psychologist at UC Irvine and the lead author of the new study, says. “And when we looked at people with HSAM, in all measures, we found memory distortions too.”

To test whether these people could be deceived into remembering false or distorted memories, the researchers enlisted 20 people with hyperthymesia and compared their performance in a set of standard memory implantation tests—which attempt to fool the participant into recalling incorrect specifics or events that didn’t occur—to 38 people with normal memory. These types of tests have frequently been used in the push for limiting the reliance on witness testimony in the criminal justice system, as they indicate that people often misremember events and details because of leading questions.

In the first test, the participants were shown a series of 15 related words one by one on a screen. Then, afterward, they were tested on whether they’d seen specific words, including a critical “lure” word that was related to the rest but did not actually appear. Most non-hyperthymestic people taking the test would report seeing the lure word even though it was never displayed, because they’d associate it with the words actually shown.

But what about hyperthymestic people? In the experiment, both the control group and the participants with hyperthymesia said they observed the "lure" 70 percent of the time.

The second test involved a slideshow of photographs that portrayed a crime. Forty minutes later, the participants read a text narrative that described the same event, but also included six detailed errors. After this, the participants were given multiple choice questions on what they saw in the original photos. Both groups made errors, influenced by the text they read after seeing the photos. However, the people with hyperthymesia made nearly 73 percent more errors than the control group, perhaps indicating a greater reliance on textual cues.

The results of the third test were the most staggering. Dispersed among dozens of irrelevant facts about recent history that were meant to distract, the participants were told that, on 9/11, someone had captured footage of United Flight 93 crashing in Pennsylvania. Then, on a written questionnaire, they were asked if they’d seen that “well-publicized footage.” Twenty-nine percent of the control group and twenty percent of the hyperthymestic participants reported that they’d seen the footage—an impossibility, because no such video exists.

Anyways, the study served as a broader glimpse into the memory processes of people with hyperthymesia and how they might—or might not—actually differ from the rest of the human race.

One of this study’s authors, Aurora LePort, had previously conducted neurological research into the same people with HSAM tested in this study, and found structural differences in their brains, including stronger white matter in areas specifically associated with autobiographical memory—recall of events that occurred to oneself—rather than areas linked to wider applications of memory. The reality that these people can’t perform any better on memory distortion tests similarly implies a fundamental difference between autobiographical memory (at which they clearly surpass the average human in) and memory as a whole.

For your reading pleasure, here's the article: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/11/even-people-with-perfect-memory-can-be-tricked-into-recalling-fake-events/

Dr. Doolittle's Takes Working Memory

Memory just seems like another system of sensation and perception, just that what is perceived is saved forever. We sense everything in our sensory memory, but our sensory memory is fleeting and limited. What we actually perceive, we rehearse and it becomes part of our long term memory that we can retrieve later on. Before it gets to the long term memory, though, it is still in short term memory--or your working memory. The working memory is the more evolved term for the short term memory. The working memory is more dynamic than the static short term memory. Your working memory temporarily stores information and manipulates it. It is active and dynamic. When you see something, it goes into your working memory and you can evoke long term memories that will make you notice some things and not others. It basically ties together all of your memories so you can make connections. So, that's all very nice. Lovely definitions. So I found a Ted video in which Peter Doolittle, an educational psychologist, talks about the importance and limitations of your working memory.

Dr. Dootlittle (lol) talks about a guy who couldn't text and talk at the same time and approaches it from a working memory perspective. He describes the working memory as having four parts. It can store immediate experiences and knowledge, it allows us pull back long term memories, it helps us process our goals, and processes and manipulates our memories. Our working memory capacity can have effects on us. People with a high working memory capacity are known to be good story tellers, do well on standardized tests, have high level writing abilities, and can reason at high levels. Then, Peter asks the audience to perform a few tests to play with their working memories. He tells them to remember 5 words: tree, highway, mirror, saturn, and electrode. He then asks them what 23x8 is. He asks them to count on their left hand and recite the last 5 letters of the english alphabet backward. He then asks the audience how many words they remember. Only about half of the people raised their hands.

Dr. Doolittle says that our working memory allows us to make sense of the world around us, but it has limitations. It has limited capacity and limited duration. We can only remember things for about 4 things for about 10-20 seconds unless we do something with that information. We can apply it to something or even just talk to someone about it.

He says that we need to process what's going on the moment it happens. We need to practice, apply, and talk to others about new information. We need to think elaborately. We need to make connections with information and use imagery when thinking. We need to structure what we're doing in ways it makes sense. We also need to support information over time as it changes. His take home message is that what we process, we learn and if we're not processing life, we're not living it.

Eh. Seems a bit fluffy to me--like obviously if we're not processing life then we're not perceiving and then we're really just not taking in everything around us. That's basically like being in a coma. I think his point was more to just show the people how our memory works and some ways to improve your working memory. It was just a bit short for a crash course on memory.

Anyway, what do you guys think about his message? Did it inspire you? Personally I found it a bit weak for a Ted talk. The the video is posted below--take a look if you want.

Working Memory

I came across an interesting article about working memory. In this article, it states that, just as we learned yesterday, working memory is "decidedly finite," much like our flashlight example. This has a lot to do with our problem solving skills and our ability to focus. Apparently, as Jennifer Wiley and Andrew Jarosz of the University of Illinois at Chicago found out, it also has a lot to do with how we solve mathematical and creative problems.

Interestingly, working memory has a lot to do with solving math problems and thinking analytically. High working memory capacity has to do with better mathematical problem solving. It also helps focus attention and keep people from being distracted.

However, high working memory capacity appears to hinder creative thinking, such as creative, out-of-the box problem solving. Because creative thinking can require seeing the bigger picture, thinking of a totally new approach, or analyzing different, random pieces of information, people with higher working memory capacity find this difficult because they are to focused in to what they are doing or a specific way of thinking. As it turns out, too much focus can make creative problem solving hard. 

I find this very interesting, because it helps explain how I think, as well as other people that are not mathematically inclined. I do have trouble focusing on concepts occasionally, and math is challenging to understand for me. I find that I have a talent at approaching  problems creatively and finding unusual solutions and approaches. Perhaps I don't have a higher working memory capacity. How interesting!

Learning in Action

Right after being tested on chapter 6 about Learning, I went home for Thanksgiving break. At home, I had the funniest experience that had to with the topics we have covered in class and provided some real-life examples. First, my cat ran outside at night on Thanksgiving. It was dark, and we did not know how to find her. We were looking outside for about 20 minutes when my mom had the idea to bring out her bag of cat food and shake it, in the hopes that my cat would come when she heard the food. Amazingly, this worked. Right after we started shaking the bag around my neighbor's yard, which was the direction we saw her run in, she darted out from where she was hiding and came right up to the bag. I realized that this might be a nice example of Operant Conditioning. We always shake her bag of food when we pour it into her bowl, which lets her know food is coming, and she runs to it. The reinforcer is that she gets food, so she keeps repeating the behavior. She responded the same way, even in a different environment! Skinner would be proud.
Another example of learning occurred with my brother. He used to get rewards for cleaning his room, but over time my mom stopped rewarding him. He realized that he wasn't getting anything in return for cleaning his room anymore, so he stopped. His behavior was not being reinforced, so it waned off. He used to be given a treat after every week that he cleaned his room (fixed interval.) That worked fairly well when he was getting reinforces, but as this slowly dwindled (every few weeks to whenever it was randomly checked) the set schedule faded and the behavior ceased to be repeated. This shaping only worked when he was getting reinforced on a set pattern, and without this structure it collapsed. Psychology at work!

Sleeping Disords

There are 5 stages of sleep. Stage 1: transition into sleep. Falling asleep, but still alert. Stage 2: Sleep spindles-start to go into a deeper sleep. Stage 3 and 4: Deep sleep-many delta waves. REM: intense brain activity sleep-mind goes crazy, body is paralyzed.

I find sleep disorders very interesting. Personally, I cherish my sleep and I don't know what I would do if I didn't have it. To have a sleep disorder, for me, is just more difficult to actually picture.

There is insomnia which is where you can't fall asleep at night or where you wake up in the middle of the night. I know someone who has insomnia that I used to babysit for. Their siblings would go to bed when I told them, but every so often, she would come out of her room and see what was going on because she couldn't fall asleep. She would either wait until her parents came home to go to sleep, or she would fall asleep way past her bed time.

Then there is narcolepsy which is a sleep disorder that you would randomly fall into an REM sleep. This can be very dangerous because just out of no where, unexpectedly, you just fall asleep. There is also sleep apnea, which is where there is a partial blockage in your throat and you take a gasp of air throughout the night. Both my parents have sleep apnea. With sleep apnea, you will never get a full cycle of sleep.

The one that seems like the most difficult sleep disorder to me is night terrors. From a parent's point of view, it has to seem like something so scary. Randomly, your child will just start screaming and there is no way that you can stop it, they just scream and scream. Also, they are sleeping, so it's not like they're awake and aware. They won't remember it happening to them in the morning either. It's just something so scary and out of this world.

Watch and Learn

I find myself to learn more by watching other people do something and I try to mimic it. When it comes to being taught to do something, I get too caught up in the instructions and trying to pay attention to making sure that I'm doing it right. I like watching how other people do it and then trying to figure it out from there. In my piano lessons, when my teacher is teaching me a song and he plays it, I will watch him playing it rather than following with the notes. In the end, it's not such a good thing because I end up not learning how to read the notes, rather just memorize where his fingers were placed on the keys and playing that.

Learning by watching others can be something so dangerous. Kids with aggressive parents become aggressive people. Kids who play video games can become kids with so many anger and violence issues. If they get in trouble for it, they can just tell the person that told them to stop that their mommy or daddy also does those types of things and that means it's not wrong.

It also can be dangerous with peer experiences. If you see your friend drinking or using drugs and you see that they can tolerate it, no problems, you might think that it's okay because your friend was fine so you will also be fine. That is very wrong because everyone has different tolerance levels. Just because your friend was fine doesn't mean you will be because your tolerance level may be much lower.

Learning by watching others can also be something so great. If a parent is a good person and they do kind things for others, the kids might mimic their behavior and do kind things for others. Learning by observing can go either way, good or bad, it all depends on who you are observing. If a kid is taught only by observing, I don't believe they will get so far in life. If they only know how to do things because of what others do, they won't ever learn how to do things on their own.