1. Forming memories in the brain : Process of consolidation
Consolidation : transforms new memories from a fragile state to a more permanent state
Levels of reorganization in nervous system :
Synaptic consolidation
Systems consolidation

2. Synaptic consolidation
Occurs at synapses
Happens rapidly
Over a period of minutes
Discovered molecular processes involved in synthesizing the proteins that result in structural change at the synapse

3. Systems consolidation
Many brain regions
Gradual reorganization of cortical circuits
Takes place on a longer time scale, lasting weeks, months, or even years
Importance of hippocampus in consolidation
H.M. lost his ability to form new memories after his hippocampus was removed

4. Chapter summery 17
Consolidation transforms new memories into a state in which they are more resistant to disruption.
Synaptic consolidation occurs at synapses and is rapid.
Systems consolidation involves the reorganization of cortical circuits and is slower

5. H.M. Anterograde amnesia
Removal of H.M.’s hippocampus made it impossible for him to form new memories
Retrograde amnesia (partially)
Amnesia extended back for about years prior to his operation
He could remember events that occurred before then

6. Graded amnesia
H.M. could remember events from his childhood, but apparently not with as much clarity and detail as a person without brain damage
Graded amnesia = amnesia is most severe for events that occurred just prior to the injury and becomes less severe for earlier, more remote events

7. Forming memories in the brain : Fragility of new memories
Graded amnesia (retrograde amnesia)
Memory for recent events is more fragile than memory for remote events

8. Forming memories in the brain : Fragility of new memories
Consolidation
Transforms new memories from a fragile state, in which they can be disrupted, to a more permanent state, in which they are resistant to disruption
A consolidation process must occur before memories become resistant to being disrupted

9. Hippocampus & consolidation
Memory retrieval depends on the hippocampus during consolidation
Once consolidation is complete
Retrieval no longer depends on the hippocampus
Example : Graded amnesia after hippocampectomy

10. Your memory for last new year’s Eve could include sights, sounds, smells, emotions you were feeling and thoughts you were thinking at the stroke of midnight
Experience results in activity of the different cortical areas
No connection in the cortex

11. Standard model of consolidation
Incoming information activates a number of areas in the cortex.
Activation is distributed across the cortex because memories typically involve many sensory and cognitive areas.
Cortex communicates with hippocampus

12. Reactivation
Hippocampus replays the neural activity associated with a memory
Results in the formation of connections between the cortical areas

13. Standard model of consolidation
Reactivation process occurs during sleep or during periods of relaxed wakefulness
Reactivation process can be enhanced if a consciously rehearses a memory

14. Standard model of consolidation
“ Consolidation occurs during sleep ”
Peigneux et al.,2004
Walker & Stickgold, 2004
Finding that memory for learning is enhanced when the learning is immediately followed by a period of sleep

15. Standard model of consolidation
cortical connections become strong enough
the different sites in the cortex become directly linked
hippocampus is no longer necessary

16. Standard model of consolidation

17. Chapter summery 18.1 during consolidation
The standard model of consolidation proposes that
during consolidation
Memory retrieval depends on the hippocampus
after consolidation is complete
Memory retrieval involves the cortex
Hippocampus is no longer involved

18. Standard model of consolidation
Retrieval of recent memories depends on the hippocampus, and cortical connections have not yet formed
(a) For retrieval of recent memories, hippocampal activation is high and cortical activation is low

19. Standard model of consolidation
Once consolidation has occurred, cortical connections have formed, and the hippocampus is no longer needed.
(b) For retrieval of remote memories, cortical activation is high, and there is no hippocampal activation.

20. Standard model of consolidation
Recent memory : hippocampus & cortex
Remote memory : cortex only

21. Medial temporal lobe & semantic M
Recently learned memories cause activity in the MTL
MTL do not activated for
remote (semantic) memories.
Haist 2001 , Wiltgen 2004

22. Mental time travel (episodic M) & MTL
episodic memory
Ryan et al.,2001
Participants engage in mental time travel
fMRI study activity in hippocampus
MTL is activated both when recent episodic memories and remote episodic memories are retrieved

23. Hippocampus is activated during retrieval of both recent and remote memories

24. Asaf Gilboa and coworkers 2004
Showing photographs of themselves engaging in various activities that were taken at times ranging from very recently, to when they were 5 years old
Results : hippocampus was activated during retrieval of both recent and remote memories.

25. Moscovitch & Nadel 1997
Experiments that demonstrate MTL and HC activation when retrieving remote episodic memories
Support the idea that the hippocampus and MTL are always important when accessing the details of episodic memories

26. Peter Bayley and coworkers 2005
Describe patients with damage to the MTL who were still able to remember the details of remote episodic memories
Results fits the standard model

27. Standard model of consolidation
Support evidence
Haist et al.,2001
Wiltgen et al.,2004
Peter Bayley and coworkers 2005
Conflict evidence
Ryan et al.,2004
Asaf Gilboa and coworkers,2004
Moscovitch et al.,2005
Nadel & Moscovitch, 1997
Recent memory : hippocampus & cortex
Remote memory : cortex only

28. Chapter summery 18.2
There is evidence supporting the standard model of consolidation,
and also evidence supporting the idea that retrieval of episodic memories always involves the hippocampus.

29. Emotional memory
More emotionally events seem to be remembered more easily and vividly than less emotionally events
Beginning or ending relationships
Arousing words / Neutral words
Events experienced by many people simultaneously : tsunami , 9/11 terrorist attack

30. Memory for emotional stimuli
Kevin Lavin and Elizabeth Phelps 1998
Emotionally charged events are easier to remember
Tested participants’ ability to recall
Arousing words : profanity & sexually explicit words
Neutral words : street , store
They can recall immediately after they were presented
Results : better memory for arousing words

31. Memory for emotional stimuli
Florin Dolcos and coworkers 2005
Tested participants’ ability to recognize emotional and neutral pictures
Memory test 1 year after they were initially presented
Results : better memory for the emotional pictures

32. Memory for emotional stimuli
(a) Immediately after reading a word
(b) 1 years after viewing the pictures

33. Memory for emotional stimuli
Emotional memory / Amydala
Brain imaging : fMRI measured by Dolcos
Amygdala activity was higher for the emotional words

34. Memory for emotional stimuli
Emotional memory / Amygdala
Neuropsychological study :
Viewed a slide show about a boy and his mother in which a boy is injured halfway through the show
Participants : without brain damage
Enhanced memory for emotional part of story
B.P. : damaged to amygdala
Not enhanced

35. Memory for emotional stimuli
Amygdala
Emotion improves memory
Emotion enhance the process of consolidation

37. Chapter summery 19
Memory for emotional stimuli is generally enhanced compared to memory for neutral stimuli.
The results of brain scanning and neuropsychological experiments indicate that the amygdala is involved in emotional memory.

38. How do we retrieve information from LTM ?
Retrieval failure occur when the information is “in there” , but we can’t get it out.
Most of our failures of memory are failures of retrieval
Example : you’ve studied hard for an exam but can’t come up with the answer when you’re taking the exam, only to remember it later when the exam is over.

39. Retrieval cues
Cues that help us remember information stored in our memory
Returning to a particular place stimulated memories associated with that place
Location can serve as a retrieval cue

40. Retrieval cues : location
While I was in my office at home ,I had made a mental note to be sure to take the DVD on amnesia to school for my cognitive psychology class
A short while later, as I was leaving the house, I had a nagging feeling that I was forgetting something, but I couldn’t remember what it was.
As soon as I got home, I remembered

41. Retrieval cues : location
Angela’s experience
When I was 8 years old, both of my grandparents passed away. Their house was sold, and that chapter of my life was closed. Since then I can remember general things about being there as a child, but not the details.
One day I decided to go for a drive. I went to my grandparents’ old house and I pulled around to the alley and parked. As I sat there and stared at the house, the most amazing thing happened. I experienced a vivid recollection.
All of a sudden, I was 8 years old again. I could see myself in the backyard, learning to ride a bike for the first time. I could see the inside of the house. I remembered exactly what every detail looked like. I could even remember the distinct smell. So many times I tried to remember these things, but never so vividly did I remember such detail.

42. Retrieval cues
That are provided by returning to the location where memories were initially formed.
Hearing the particular song can bring back memories for events you might not thought about for years
A musty smell like the stairwell of my grandparents’ house that used to climb

43. Cued recall Endel Tulving and Zena Pearlstone 1966
Presented participants with a list of words to remember
Free-recall group
Pigeon, sparrow, chair, dresser, engineer, lawyer
Cued-recall group
Birds : Pigeon, sparrow
Furniture : chair, dresser
Professions : engineer, lawyer

44. Cued recall Endel Tulving and Zena Pearlstone 1966
For the memory test,
Participants in the free-recall group were asked to write down as many as possible.
Participants in the cued-recall group were also asked to recall the words, but were provided with the names of the categories : birds , furniture, professions

45. Endel Tulving and Zena Pearlstone 1966

46. Cued recall Endel Tulving and Zena Pearlstone 1966
Conclusion : the retrieval cues aid memory
Free-recall gr. : Recall 40%
Cued-recall gr. : Recall 75%

47. Power of retrieval cues
Timo Mantyla 1986
He presented his participants with a list of 600 nouns,
such as : banana , freedom , tree
During learning, the participants were told to write down three words they associated with each noun
Banana : yellow , bunches , edible

48. Power of retrieval cues
Timo Mantyla 1986
When the participants took a surprise memory test,
They were presented with the three words they had created and were asked to produce the original word,
They were able to remember 90% of the 600 words

49. Power of retrieval cues
Timo Mantyla 1986
Compared to another groups
During learning : created cues for “banana”  own cues provided in test
During learning : saw “banana” and cues created by someone else  other person’s cues provided in test
Didn’t participate in learning  other person’s cues provided in test

50. Power of retrieval cues
Timo Mantyla 1986

51. Power of retrieval cues
Timo Mantyla 1986
Conclusions :
Retrieval cues ( the 3 words ) provide extremely effective information for retrieving memories,
but that the retrieval cues were more effective when they were created by the person whose memory was being tested

52. Chapter summery 20 Retrieving LTM is aided by retrieval cues.
This has been determined by cues- recall experiments and experiments and experiments in which participants created retrieval cues that later helped them retrieve memories.

53. Encoding specificity
Memory is better when a cue that was associated with an event is reinstated & when the event is to be remembered
Encoding
Retrieval

54. Encoding specificity D.R. Godden and Alan Baddeley’s 1975
“diving experiment”
On land studying a list of words group
Underwater studying a list of words group
Each ½ of both groups were tested for recall on land
Each ½ of both groups were tested for recall underwater

55. “diving experiment” The best recall occurred when encoding
and retrieval
occurred in the
same environment

56. Encoding specificity Harry Grant and coworkers 1998
Studying experiment
Participants read an article on psycho immunology while wearing headphones.
Silent condition group
Noisy condition group
Half of each : short-answer test on the article under silent condition
Half of each : short-answer test on the article under noisy condition

57. Studying experiment
Participants did better when the testing condition matched the study condition

58. Chapter summery 21
The principle of encoding specificity states that we learn information along with its context.
Godden and Baddeley’s “diving experiment” and Grant’s studying experiment illustrate the effectiveness of encoding and retrieving information under the same conditions

59. State-Dependent learning
Internal state : mood or state of awareness
Learning is associated with a particular internal state
Principle : memory will be better when a person’s state during retrieval matches his or her internal state during encoding

60. State-Dependent learning
Eric Eich and Janet Metcalfe 1989
Memory is better when a person’s mood during retrieval matches his or her mood during encoding.
Asking participants to think positive thoughts while listening to “merry” music or depressing thoughts while listening to “melancholic” music
Participants rated their mood while listening

61. State-Dependent learning
Eric Eich and Janet Metcalfe 1989
When mood rating reach “very pleasant” or “very unpleasant”
Encoding part of the experiment began
Participants studied lists of words while in their positive or negative mood

62. State-Dependent learning
Eric Eich and Janet Metcalfe 1989
After the study session ended
Participants were told to return in 2 days
The sad group stayed in the lab a little longer
Snacking on cookies and chatting with the experimenter while happy music played in the background
So they wouldn’t leave the laboratory in a bad mood

63. State-Dependent learning
Eric Eich and Janet Metcalfe 1989
2 days later
Participants returned
The same procedure was used to put them in a positive or negative mood.
When they reach the mood
They were given a memory test for the words they had studied 2 days earlier

64. State-Dependent learning
The best recall occurred
when encoding
and retrieval
matched in
same mood

65. Chapter summery 22
According to the principle of state-dependent learning, a person’s memory will be better when his or her internal state during retrieval matches the state during encoding.
Eich’ s mood experiment supports this idea.

66. What memory research tells us about studying ?
Ways of improving learning and memory
Elaborate and generate
Organize
Associate
Take breaks
Match learning and testing conditions

67. Elaborate and Generate
Elaboration
The step that transfer the material you are reading into LTM
Maintenance rehearsal : read and reread
Elaborative rehearsal : better transfer to LTM

68. Elaborate and Generate
Research has shown that
students who read a text with the idea of making up questions did as well on an exam as students who read a text with the idea of answering questions later ,
and both groups did better than a group who did not create or answer questions

69. Elaborate and Generate
Study technique : method of talking out loud
Mahya Tavakkoli’ s method
My study technique is to talk out loud and explain everything that I know. Sometimes when you read the material, you think “Yeah! I know this!” and move on.
But when you get to the exam, you get struck! This is because the material is not in front of you.
So by explaining everything out loud, it makes much more sense. It’s a good method to pretend that you’re the professor trying to teach a class of 500 students.

70. Elaborate and Generate
S.W. Peterson 1992
82% of students highlight
Most of them do so while they are reading the material for the first time
Compared comprehension of both groups  no difference between the performance of both groups when they were tested on the material

71. Elaborate and Generate
Elaborative processing & generation effect
Making up question
Answering question
Recheck correction of the answer to get feedback
Mahya ’s method of “pretending you are the professor”
Beware of highlighting (automatic behaviour)

72. Organize Memory is better when the material is organized. Organization
creates a framework that helps relate some information to other information
Making “trees”
Image
Chunking
makes the material more meaningful
Reduce the load on your memory

73. Associate
Elaborative processing is associating what you are learning to what you already know
Prior learning creates a structure on which to hang new information
Creating imaging that link two things

74. Take breaks
Study in a number of shorter sessions rather than trying to learn everything at once
Memory is better
when studying the material is broken into a number of short sessions with breaks in between
than when studying occurs in one long session

75. Take breaks
The advantage for short study sessions is called Distributed versus massed practice effect
It is difficult to maintain close attention to material throughout a long study session
Studying after a break gives better feedback about what you actually know.
Consolidation is enhanced during sleep

76. Sleep effect Helps consolidation Restorative effect
Improves ability to concentrate and pay attention

77. Match learning and testing conditions
Memory should be better when study (encoding) and testing (retrieval) conditions match as closely as possible.
Encoding specificity
State-dependence learning

78. Smith’s result Research has shown that people remember material better
when they have learned it in a number of different locations,
compared to spending the same amount of time studying in one location

79. Match learning and testing conditions
Making up questions about the material helps encoding
Answering the questions, which involves retrieval,
not only provides feedback about how well you know the material but helps achieve better encoding as well
This strengthened encoding then increases the likelihood that retrieval will be successful

80. Chapter summery 23
Five memory principles that can be applied to studying are
Elaborate and generate
Organize
Associate
Take breaks
Match learning and test conditions

81. Are memories ever Permanent ?
Memory is initially fragile, so a disrupting event that occurs shortly after a memory is formed can disrupt formation of memory
Once consolidation has occurred, then the same disrupting event cannot affect the memory

82. Conditioning Conditioning :
procedure in which pairing a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that elicits a response
causes the neutral stimulus to elicit that response

83. Conditioning Pavlov’s experiment 1927
He presented a ringing bell ( the neutral stimulus ) to a dog
Followed by presentation of food ( which causes the dog to salivate )
This pairing eventually caused the dog to salivate when it heard the bell

84. Conditioning Stimulus (food)  response (saliva)
Stimulus + neutral stimulus (ringing bell)  response
Neutral stimulus + …  response

85. Fear conditioning Stimulus (unpleasant)  response (avoid)
Shock  freeze
Stimulus (shock) + neutral stimuli (tone)  response (freeze)
Neutral stimulus (tone)  response (freeze)

86. Fear conditioning The rat hears a tone Pairing : tone & shock
The rat receives a shock to its foot
The shock causes the rat to freeze in place
Pairing : tone & shock
The rat tested later
Neutral tone causes the fear response of freezing

87. Fear conditioning

88. Fear conditioning Karim Nader ’s experiments
How injection of the chemical anisomycin would affect fear conditioning
Anisomycin :
ATB that inhibits protein synthesis,
which causes the structural changes at the synapse that are responsible for the formation of new memories

89. Effect on fear conditioning of injecting anisomycin
Condition 1 : inject before consolidation
Condition 2 : inject after consolidation
Condition 3 : inject during reactivation

90. Figure 6. 34: The effect on fear conditioning of injecting anisomycin
Figure 6.34: The effect on fear conditioning of injecting anisomycin. This is based on an experiment by Nader et al. (2000a). See text for details.

91. 1 : Immediate presentation of anisomycin
Day1 : inject anisomycin + Initial condition (tone + shock)  fear response in rat (freeze)
Anisomycin disrupts protein synthesis before consolidation occur
Day3 : tone condition  no rat’s memory for shock-tone pairing  rat does not freeze

92. 2 : Later presentation of anisomycin alone
Day1 : shock-tone pairing condition  fear response (freeze)  consolidation : rat learn to fear tone
Day2 : inject anisomycin 24 hours after that
No disruption of rat’s memory
Consolidation has occurred
Day3 : tone  rat freeze

93. 3 : Later presentation of anisomycin with the tone
Day1 : shock-tone pairing condition  fear response (freeze)  consolidation : rat learn to fear tone
Day2 : tone  rat freeze  reactivation + inject anisomycin  eliminates the rat’s memory
Day3 : tone  rat has no memory  rat does not freeze

94. Karim Nader ’s experiments
Karim Nader injected the anisomycin under 3 different conditions :
Immediate presentation of anisomycin  prevents conditioning
Later presentation of anisomycin alone  has no effect (consolidation occurred)
Later presentation of anisomycin with the tone  eliminates conditioning

95. Reconsolidation
Learning  consolidation  learning  reactivation : reconsolidation  memory
1 : learning // no consolidation
2 : learning  consolidation  memory
3 : learning  consolidation  learning  reactivation // no reconsolidation  eliminates memory

96. Updating memory Animal returns to the location of a food source
Reactivates the original memory
Animal finds that the food has been moved to a new nearby location
New information updates the memory
Updated memory is then reconsolidation

97. Updating memory
Reconsolidation & reactivation occur when retrieved , provide an opportunity for reinforcing or updating memories
Memory becomes to being changed or disrupted every time it is retrieved
Memory becomes a more dynamic and adaptable process

98. Chapter summery 24
Recent research on memory, based largely on fear conditioning in rats, indicates that memories can become susceptible to disruption when they are reactivated by retrieval.
After reactivation these memories must be reconsolidated.
This process may be a mechanism for refining and updating memories.