Episodic memory

How are false autobiographical memories created? This question is important because false autobiographical memory influences the self. An autobiographical memory is the memory we have of an event that happened at a particular time and place in our past (Walker, 2016, lec 3). Therefore, a false autobiographical memory entails peoples’ recall of events that they think they experienced when in fact that event did not occur (Simone, 2016, lec 3). Furthermore, in answering the question above, we…

As a project for my Child Development class, I completed an observational child study. I chose a four year old male child of one of my co-workers, whom I had met several months prior to the study. Paxton was born on June 15, 2012 and was six weeks premature. Aside from the requirement of a feeding tube at birth, Paxton suffered no complications. At 30 pounds and 33 inches, he is in the 5th percentile in weight and the 25th percentile in height (Clinical Growth Charts, 2016). His height is…

How Hollywood Forgets the Real Facts About Memory Loss While the most intense amnesia syndromes are normally triggered by neurosurgery, brain infection, or a stroke (Baxendale, 2004), amnesia caused by traumatic brain injuries and psychological stress seem to occur more often in Hollywood cinema. Through the protagonists of The Bourne Series and Anastasia, Hollywood follows the aftermath of traumatic incidences which cause both individuals to develop retrograde amnesia and lose their identity.…

Memory is a critical part of our lives. It helps us to get better grades in school and reflect on special moments we experienced. There is a vast amount of research in psychology on what promotes and inhibits memory encoding and retrieval. Our current study assessed the difference in memory retention when expecting a memory test vs. a surprise memory test. We selected 253 participants from Dalhousie University and split them into two groups. One group was expecting a memory test and the other…

complex worldly knowledge. Schematic knowledge integrates previous semantic and episodic knowledge and guides future behavior. A study by Grymas and colleagues shows that when individuals anticipate a future event, they do so through previous episodic and semantic memory.…

Preface In the movie Memento, the viewer is faced with a number of questions about memory and the influences it has on a person’s satisfaction in life, their personality and brain function. These questions are especially relevant to the protagonist, Leonard Shelby who has Anterograde amnesia after damage to the hippocampus. The director, Christopher Nolan, accurately portrays the influences of hippocampal damage, similarly seen in Henry Molasis (H.M) Biological Biologically speaking,…

Memories in the brain are at times recycled from episodic to semantic memories. This transfer makes a memory general knowledge to the individual. That creates more room for new memories. The problem with this system is that a new memory is encoded into an old memory. Both memories may have many similarities, but can have different core context. For example, an individual studies months on a specific question that asks the individual to name four characteristics to a mental disorder, after…

These regions have been implicated in episodic memory (EM), memories for events related to one’s personal past (Buckner et al., 2005), and mental simulation for the future (Addis, Wong, & Schacter, 2007; Hassabis, Kumaran, & Maguire, 2007). Episodic future thinking (EFT) refers to the ability to envision oneself in a future or imagined scene that one has yet to experience (Hassabis et al., 2007). Due to similar neuronal activations in EM and EFT, the episodic simulation hypothesis (ESH) was…

Flashbulb memories (FBMs) can be defined as episodic memories and recollections of autobiographical events that are formed when an individual experiences intense emotions generating from a surprising public event. FBMs are referred to as special memories that are cognitively processed and stored as explicit recollections and are vivid, long lasting and consistent remembrances retained throughout life. (Goldstein, 2014). This phenomenon was first proposed by Brown & Kulik (1977) whereby they…

Introduction Long-term memory (LTM) consists of two categories namely episodic memory (EM) and semantic memory (SM). SM is the general knowledge that we understand about the world around us, such as facts, beliefs or concepts, devoid of autobiographical details. Cases of organic amnesia assist us in understanding how memory functions, though it is well established that EM and SM are separate systems within LTM (Tulving, 1972). It is less well established if SM can be divided into functionally…