Memory is of 3 types:

SENSORY MEMORY : SHORT TERM MEMORY / WORKING LONG TERM MEMORY

• it's purpose is to facilitate the
rapid processing of incoming
information.
• with the help of selective
attention sifting of relevant
material from sensory
memory is done for further
processing and storage in
STM.
• most sensory memory fades in
xyz seconds.
MEMORY
• allows storage of information for
___ seconds.
• when memories are rehearsed in
STM, they get Encoded in LTM.
• STM is sensitive to ddsof brain
tissue such as Alzheimer's.
- information gets in here
through the process of
Encoding.
• Encoding is the process of
placing information into what
is believed to be a limitless
memory resevoir.
• Visual encoding, Semantic
encoding
• It is resilient to attack, unlike
STM.
• Storage material includes :
• 1. Autobiographical memory
• 2. Flashbulb Memories

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY (ABM)

 Memories for issue and events that relate to oneself – specific facts – specific experiences.
 It is characterized by a general recall of the event + an interpretation of the event + a recall of
few specific details + represent personal meaning, all these but at the expense of accuracy.
 ABM is associated with the active experience of remembering.
 Autobiographical memory is a memory system consisting of episodes recollected from an
individual's life, based on a combination of episodic (personal experiences and specific objects,
people and events experienced at particular time and place) and semantic (general knowledge
and facts about the world) memory.

FLASHBULB MEMORIES
 Are a specific type of ABM.
 Memories which make us aware of emotionally arousing event, even though they are recalled
with seeming accuracy due to rehearsal, their accuracy cannot be assumed.
 Refer to Hyperamnesia for pathological role of flashbulb memories.

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MEMORY TESTS

 Most memory tests measure recall of prior events. In clinical practice, such tests are 5-minutes
recall, asking the patient what they had for breakfast or inquiring about details of their past life.

 What do these recall tests measure?

1] In responding to such 5 minute recall tests, we are conscious of what we are remembering i.e it
tests our Explicit/ Declarative / Relational Memory.
2] In performance tasks, there is no active remembering, no active awareness/ consciousness of
selecting the memory in undertaking the particular skill i.e. test for Implicit / Procedural/ Skills
memory

LTM

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 RESEARCH1 : studies with injury to Hippocampus showed that

1] Both Declarative Memory and Procedural memory use different parts of the brain and can
function independently.

2] Procedural memory2 is stored in Limbic, Amygdala, and cerebellum. Procedural memory is a type
of implicit memory (unconscious memory) and long-term memory which aids the performance
of particular types of tasks without conscious awareness of these previous experiences.
Procedural memory guides the processes we perform and most frequently resides below the
level of conscious awareness. When needed, procedural memories are automatically retrieved
and utilized for the execution of the integrated procedures involved in both cognitive and motor
skills, from tying shoes to flying an airplane to reading. Procedural memories are accessed and
used without the need for conscious control or attention.

Procedural memory is created through procedural learning or, repeating a complex activity over and
over again until all of the relevant neural systems work together to automatically produce the
activity. Implicit procedural learning is essential for the development of any motor skill or cognitive
activity.

 Declarative memory is stored in Hippocampus. Explicit memory (or declarative memory) is one
of the two main types of long-term human memory. It is the conscious, intentional recollection
of factual information, previous experiences and concepts. Explicit memory can be divided into
two categories: episodic memory, which stores specific personal experiences, and semantic
memory, which stores factual information.

3] Injury to Hippocampus area leaves us unable to process new declarative memories.

Although many psychologists believe that the entire brain is involved with memory, the hippocampus
and surrounding structures appear to be most important in declarative memory specifically. The ability
to retain and recall episodic memories is highly dependent on the hippocampus, whereas the formation
of new declarative memories relies on both the hippocampus and parahippocampus. Other studies have
found that the parahippocampal cortices were related to superior Recognition Memory.

The lateral Prefrontal cortex (PFC) is essential for remembering contextual details of an experience
rather than for memory formation. The PFC is also more involved with episodic memory than semantic
memory, although it does play a small role in semantics. Using PET studies and word stimuli, Endel

1
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wsu-sandbox/chapter/parts-of-the-brain-involved-with-memory/
2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_memory

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Tulving found that remembering is an automatic process. It is also well documented that a hemispheric
asymmetry occurs in the PFC: When encoding memories, the Left Dorsolateral PFC (LPFC) is activated,
and when retrieving memories, activation is seen in the Right Dorsolateral PFC (RPFC).

The amygdala is believed to be involved in the encoding and retrieval of emotionally charged memories.
Much of the evidence for this has come from research on a phenomenon known as flashbulb memories.
These are instances in which memories of powerful emotional events are more highly detailed and
enduring than regular memories (e.g. September 11 attacks, assassination of JFK). These memories have
been linked to increased activation in the amygdala. Recent studies of patients with damage to the
amygdala suggest that it is involved in memory for general knowledge, and not for specific information.

4 parts of the process of remembering :

Registration Retention Retrieval Recall

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 MEMORY DISORDERS :-

AMNESIA : LOSS OF MEMORY

Psychogenic amnesia / Dissociative amnesia / Hysterical Amnesia

 It is the sudden amnesia that occurs under extreme trauma

 Lasts for hours or even days
 In this type of amnesia the person is unable to recall things related to personal identity ( name,
address, history) as well as personal events can’t be recalled.
Discrepancy  However, they can perform complex behaviors.
 Such contradiction between
Marked memory preservation of
impairment personality & social skills

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  It’s name Dissociative Amnesia, which is one of a group of conditions called dissociative
disorders. Dissociative disorders are mental illnesses that involve disruptions or breakdowns of
memory, consciousness, awareness, identity, and/or perception. When one or more of these
functions is disrupted, symptoms can result.

Dissociation may be associated with fugue, which

is one or more episodes of amnesia in which the
inability to recall some or all of one's past and
either the loss of one's identity or the formation of
a new identity occur with sudden, unexpected,
purposeful travel away from home.

 Another type of psycho-genic amnesia for traumatic events is called KATATHYMIC AMNESIA.
Or Motivated Forgetting. It is inability to recall specific painful forgetting, occur due to defense
mechanism of repression.
However there is some confusion whether the repression is driven by :
* a conscious motivation to forget i.e. suppression
* or whether it is unconscious i.e. primary repression.
 No loss of personal identity in katathymic amnesia, also the traumatic event which is repressed
is not available to recall unless some trigger or psychotherapy makes the memory available to
consciousness.
 It may last for many years.

Organic Amnesia [ it’s not cognitive impairment as in Dementia ,

or clouded consciousness as in Delirium]

1. Acute Brain Disease ( lasts from few minutes to few hours; brain damage is reversible)
Occurs in : Acute Head
injury in accident Epilepsy Infections

Leads to dds of perception & attention ; retrograde

amnesia ; anterograde amnesia ; Blackouts : acute
6 confusional state(Delirium).
 Hence there is a failure to encode information in LTM.
This occurs most commonly after accidents.
- Retrograde A = forgetting events just before the injury
- Anterograde A = forgetting events occurring after the injury.
- Blackouts = are periods of Anterograde A experienced through bouts of alcohol.

2. Subacute Brain disease ( lasts for an year or so)

 Example, Korsakoff’s syndrome = is the amnestic syndrome caused by thiamine deficiency.

 It can also occur due to cerebrovascular disease, multiple sclerosis, transient global amnesia.
Head injury, electoconvulsive treatment.

3. Chronic Brain disease (this progressive disease lasts for many years)

 Patients with a progressive chronic brain disease amnesia extends for many years.
 In this memory for recent events is lost b4 and then memory of remote events is lost.

RIBOT’S LAW OF MEMORY PROGRESSION3

Anxiety Amnesia

 Occurs when there is anxious preoccupation or poor concentration in dds such as depressive
illness or GAD.
 More severe forms of amnesia in depression resemble dementia, which are called
Depressive Pseudo-Dementia.

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Ribot's law of retrograde amnesia was hypothesized in 1881 by Théodule Ribot. It states that there is a time
gradient in retrograde amnesia, so that recent memories are more likely to be lost than the more remote
memories. Not all patients suffering from retrograde amnesia report the symptoms of Ribot's law.

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 PARAMNESIA : Distortion of Memory

 False memories are created. This can occur in normal subjects as well due to process of normal
forgetting or due to proactive & retroactive interference.
 It also occurs in those with emotional problems, + organic states.
 Types of Paramnesia :
a

1. RETROSPECTIVE FALSIFICATION

- refers to unintentional distortion of memory

- that occurs when it is filtered through a person’s current emotional state, experiential and cognitive
state as well.
- found in those with depressive illness who describe all past experiences in negative terms.
- So, a depressed person will highlight their failures while ignoring/ forgetting their successes.
- Therefore, actually any psychiatric illness can lead to retrospective falsification.

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2. FALSE MEMORY

- refers to recollection of an event that did not occur but which the individual strongly believes did take
place.

- take note here, that it’s not distortion of true memories, as is normal forgetting, But there’s actual
construction of memories around the events that never took place.

- Normal people (degree of retrospective falsification is inversely related to the degree of insight and
self-criticism of the individual)
- such Fallibility of memory should hardly be surprising- we often have difficulty remembering the
source of much info.- and this only worsens with age. People who are suggestible are at greater risk of
false memory.

- This concept of false memory has been developed specifically in the context of childhood abuse
recalled by adults.
- It can also be applied for False Confessions to serious crimes. Termed as MEMORY DISTRUST
SYNDROME. It emanates from the person’s own fundamental distrust of their memory, termed as
SOURCE AMNESIA, which arises because of difficulty remembering the source from which the
information was acquired.

3. SCREEN MEMORY

- Recollection that is partially true and partially false. Because the entire true memory is too painful to
recall. For eg ; individual may recall that childhood sexual abuse was perpetrated by a neighbor because
it is too painful to recall that the abuse was in fact perpetrated by their own brother.

- it is always difficult to dissect out precisely which elements of such memories are objectively true.

4. CONFABULATION

- falsification of memory in clear consciousness in association with organic pathology.

- it takes place as the filling in of gaps in memory by imagined or untrue experiences.
- some of the sttmnts may be contradictory, yet no attempt is made to correct them.

- A false description of an event, which is alleged to have occurred in the past. Could be explained as a
result of ‘tram-line’ thinking.
- Some amnestic ptts. will construct completely false explanations of TAT cards based on one false
interpretation of a detail.
- Confabulation is seen with :
 Organic states
 Hysterical psychopaths
 Amnestic syndrome
 Chronic schizophrenia

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 Some chronic schizophrenics confabulate, producing detailed descriptions of fantastic events which
have never happened. Leonhard suggests that these ptts. have a special form of FTD
(Frontotemporal dementia) which he calls ‘pictorial thinking’.
Bleuler preferred to call them ‘memory hallucinations’, since the memories are false and
unchangeable. But the ‘hallucinatory flashbacks’ which occur in temporal lobe epilepsy may better
merit the designation ‘memory hallucinations’.

- 2 broad confabulation patterns are :

 EMBARRASSED TYPE = ptt. Tries to fill in gaps in memory as a result of an awareness of a deficit
 FANTASTIC TYPE = in which missing parts are filled in by details exceeding the need of the
memory impairment

- LETHOLOGIA, temporary inability to remember names or proper nouns, is common and generally not
indicative of any pathology.

5. PSEUDOLOGIA FANTASTICA / PATHOLOGICAL LYING

- also called Fluent Plausible Lying

– used to describe confabulation that occurs in those w/o any organic brain pathology
- such as personality disorder of antisocial or hysterical type.
- Although ppl with pseudologia believes their own stories, but when confronted with incontrovertible
eveidence these individuals will admit their lying.
- at milder level pseudologia occurs in those who falsify or exaggerate the past in order to impress
others.

6. MUNCHAUSEN’S SYNDROME

- variant of pathological lying- presents onself to hospitals with bogus illnesses, complex medical
histories, and often with multiple surgical scars.
- in another form of munchausen’s syndrome, an individual, usually a parent, produces factitious illness
in somebody else, generally their child

7. VORBEIREDEN
- Approximate answers is seen in those with hysterical pseudo-dementia
- named after Ganser- Ganser Syndrome = type of factitious disorder, a mental illness in which a person
deliberately and consciously acts as if he or she has a physical or mental illness when not really sick.
People with Ganser syndrome mimic
behavior that is typical of a mental illness, 1. clouding of consciousness with disorientation
such as schizophrenia. 2. Auditory & Visual Hallucinations (or Pseudo-Hallu)
- Ganser described features common in 3. Amnesia for short period when factitious symptoms begin
criminals : 4. conversion symptoms
5. recent head injury
6. severe Emotional stress

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- Vorbeireden = ptt understands the question, yet deliberately avid the correct answer i.e. in here
consciousness is clear
Ganser = believed it to be a hysterical condition + with unconscious production of symptoms to avoid
court appearance.

Similar confusing terms

Approximate
answer/
Verbeireden

Malingering
Memory Ganser's
/ Factitious
dd DDs Syndrome

Pseudo-
Dementia

8. CRYPTAMNESIA

= experience of not remembering that one is remembering.

# a person writes a witty passage and does not realize that they are quoting from saome passage they
have seen elsewhere rather than writing something original.

9. RETROSPECTIVE DELUSIONS

-patients suffering from psychoses, backdate their delusions in spite of the clear evidence that the illness
is of recent origin. They will say that they have always been persecuted. Or that they have always been
evil.

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 ROLE OF SUGGESTIBILITY

Suggestibility is based on
Gullibility or on Implicit Trust,
such as b/w doctor and patient
Accept sttments from others.
Confabulation

Retrospective
Pseudologia SUGGESTIBILTY Falsification

False
Memory
Act upon their commands Prominent in Aesthenic or
Hysterical PD

Deny evidence from the sense or rational

understanding that would contradict
these sttments.

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 PARAMNESIA

I. distortions of recall

II. distortions of recognition

1. DÉJÀ VU

The sense of recognition is never absolute

- Not a disturbance of memory, can be experienced by normal ppl, as well as those with temporal lobe
epilepsy.
- Feeling of having experienced a current event in the past, although it has no basis in fact.
- It’s opposite is JAMAIS VOUS = that an event has been experienced before but not presently associated
with the apt feelings of familiarity.

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- DEJA ENTENDU = is the feeling of auditory recognition
- DEJA PENSE = a new thought recognized as having having previously occurred.

2. FALSE RECONNAISSANCE / MISIDENTIFICATION / FALSE RECOGNITION

- occurs in organic psychoses ; in acute and chronic schizo.

- it can be Positive misidentification & Negative misidentification

 Positive misidentification:
- The pt. recognizes strangers as his friends and relatives.
- Some pts. assert that all of the people whom they meet are doubles of real people.
- In Confusional states & Acute schizophrenia ppl are positively misidentified.
- In Chronic schizophrenia, false identity is given to every fresh person met.

 Negative misidentification:
-The pt. denies that his friends and relatives are people whom they say they are and insists that
they are strangers in disguise.
-Could result from an excessive concretization of memory images

3. CAPGRAS SYNDROME

-pt. insists that a particular person (or persons), usually somebody with whom the pt. is emotionally
linked, is not the person he claims to be but is really a double
- is often accompanied by depersonalization and occurs in a paranoid setting.
- Schizophrenia (commonest cause)
- Involutional depression
- Very hysterical women

‘AMPHITRYON ILLUSION’
- pts. believe that their spouses are doubles.

‘SOSIAS ILLUSION’
- pt. believes that other people as well as the spouse are doubles.

SYNDROME OF FREGOLI
- the pt. identifies a familiar person (usually his persecutor) in various strangers,
who are therefore fundamentally the same individual.

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 HYPERTHYMESIA
People with hyperthymesia remember an abnormally vast number of their life experiences.
American neurobiologists Elizabeth Parker, Larry Cahill, and James McGaugh (2006) identified
two defining characteristics of hyperthymesia: spending an excessive amount of time thinking
about one's past, and displaying an extraordinary ability to recall specific events from one's past.

HYPERAMNESIA
(fish pg 63)

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