Basic Neuroscience and Sensory Memory

Basic Neuroanatomy Subcortical Structures –Hippocampal Region Components –Hippocampus Proper –Dentate Gyrus –Subiculum Declarative memory Anterograde amnesia –Amygdala emotional memory –Basal Ganglia caudate nucleus putamen globus pallidus –Cerebellum complex motor control and coordination procedural memory – Diencephalon thalamus: routing station hypothalamus: regulates neurotransmitter systems

Basic Neuroanatomy Cortical Structures –right and left hemispheres laterality: dominance of one hemisphere over the other for a particular function –left: better at analytical processing, like language and math –right: better at holistic processing, like spatial or music processing

Cortical Structures Lobes of the brain –occipital lobes visual processing Hubel and Wiesel (1965) –parietal lobes sensory processing and spatial processing –temporal lobes auditory processing object recognition – parahippocampal region possible storage site for episodic memory and priming –frontal lobes: control of action, emotion, and thought important for working memory

Sensory Memory Iconic memory –Averbach (1963) presented two subjects with 1 to 13 dots for varying lengths of time ( milliseconds)

Averbach (1963)

Iconic Memory Sperling (1960): –showed people displays of letters 12 letters in a 3x4 matrix –control condition whole report condition –experimental condition partial report condition –one of three tones was sounded to indicate which row of the matrix to begin with during their recall phase

Sperling (1960)

Change Blindness Levin and Simons (1997,1998) –Video clips…

Echoic Memory Darwin, Turvey, and Crowder (1972) –read lists of numbers to people – three lists of three digits each –one list to right ear, one to left, and one to both –control condition whole report –experimental condition partial report

Darwin et al. (1972)

Haptic Sensory Memory Bliss, et al. (1966) –people received jets of air at different locations on the fingers of each hand –whole report –partial report a light or a tone cue was given to indicate which parts of the fingers would be affected Remembered almost all locations –Rapid decay (1.3 seconds)