PSYC801 Cognitive Neuroscience:
Memory
Xiaoxue (Jessie) Fu
Announcement:
• Thought paper check in
o An example is posted
• Discussion leader check in
• Start to prepare for the abstract of the group project review paper
Thought Paper
• An example is shared
• 50 points / paper
o Demonstrate good understanding of the required readings (~ 15)
o Demonstrate critical thinking; Able to deliver well-thought-out and well-articulated
arguments (~ 20)
o Link your arguments back to the concepts covered in the class / readings (~ 10)
o Academic writing style (~ 5)
Discussion Leader
1. Find a paper + Discuss with the instructor (Wednesday – Friday)
o Email the selection to the instructor ASAP – it may take multiple rounds to get it right.
o The paper is about using a neural measurement (covered in the textbooks and/or class) to
study the specific function (e.g., memory).
o The empirical study needs to be relevant to concepts covered in the background reading
o From a reputable journal. Examples: Journal of Neuroscience, NeuroImage, Cerebral
Cortex, Human Brain Mapping, Biological Psychiatry, Psychophysiology (for EEG/ ERP
research).
o The instructor will consider the paper on a case-by-case basis
2. Before class: Outline (submit to blackboard) + a brief presentation to go
through the study (email to the instructor)
Memory
What is Memory?
• A multi-system construct
• Encode, store, and retrieval information
Organization of the Medial Temporal
(MTL) Lobe Memory System
Word definition:
Rhinal—having to do with the nose
Rhinal fissure, rhinal sulcus:
shallow rostral continuation of the collateral sulcus that delimits the rostral part of the parahippocampal gyrus from
the fusiform or lateral occipitotemporal gyrus. One of the oldest sulci of the pallium, it marks the border between the
neocortex and the allocortical (olfactory).
Ento—inside, within, entorhinal: within the rhinal cortex
Peri: peri- a prefix meaning “about” or “around” (perimeter, periscope), “enclosing” or
“surrounding” (pericardium), and “near” (perigee, perihelion), peri-rhinal—surrounds the rhinal cortex
Hippo—horse, campus—sea-monster
Hippocampus named after its resemblance to the seahorse, from the Greek ἱππόκαμπος,
"seahorse" from ἵππος hippos, "horse" and κάμπος kampos, "sea monster“
Hippocampus “formation” (not cortex, gyrus, sulcus). Consists of attached separate areas
Rolled into a “jelly-roll” formation, has dentate gyrus, CA1, CA2, CA3, subiculum
Para: a prefix appearing in loanwords from Greek, most often attached to verbs and
verbal derivatives, with the meanings “at or to one side of, beside, side by side”, so the
Parahippocampal gyrus is the gyrus that runs beside the hippocampus (and extends
Further posterior and anterior.
Parahippocampal cortex is a special area of the PHG surrounding the hippocampus
Anterior and posterior; superior and inferior; lateral and medial; dorsal and ventral
(rostral and caudal) RAS is MNI/SPM/FSL for right, anterior, superior being positive
Patient H.M.
A Brief Background
• Family history of epilepsy and head injury with unconsciousness at age 9.
• 1953: Dr. Scoville performed bilateral hippocampal lesions, as a relief of medically
intractable epilepsy.
• After the surgery, seizure frequency drastically decreased (<2 / year)
• However, H.M. developed severe anterograde amnesia – could not form new
memories.
• 1957: Scoville and Milner’s paper: “Loss of recent memory after bilateral hippocampal
lesions”
o Google Scholar citation = 10,831.
H.M.’s Brain Lesion
• Medial temporal lobe (MTL)
o Including the hippocampal formation and surrounding structures.
H.M. Control:
Healthy
H.M.’s Brain Male
Lesion
× Amygdala (A)
× Entorhinal (EC)
× Collateral sulcus (cs)
× Perirhinal cortex (PR)
× Hippocampal formation (H)
H.M. Control:
Healthy
H.M.’s Brain Male
Lesion
Caudal views of the hippocampus
× Parahippocampal cortex (PH)
H.M.’s Brain Intact
Lesion
Damaged
(Corkin, 2002)
H.M.’s Cognitive Impairments
• Anterograde amnesia: Deficit in learning new information after the onset of amnesia.
• Retrograde amnesia: Deficit in memory of information that was acquired prior to the
event that caused the amnesia.
H.M.’s Cognitive Impairments
• Pervasive: across stimulus types, different memory tests, and sensory modality.
presentations (audio and visual).
• Cannot acquire new long-term memory.
H.M.’s Intact Skills
• Motor; hand-eye coordination.
• Visual perception.
• Sustained attention.
• Short-term memory and working memory.
Significance of the Seminal Work with H.M.
• Memory had a distinct neural substrate, separable from other cognitive abilities
• It inaugurated 4 decades of experimental studies of H.M. and inspired many animal
models and human studies of memory.
The MTL Memory System
What Have Studies Learned from H.M.?
• Storage vs. retrieval
• Memory is a multi-system function:
o Declarative / Episodic Memory:
▪ Memory or facts and events; representations of the external world (“What”)
▪ Can be true or false MTL
▪ Expressed through performance
o Nondeclarative / Procedural Memory:
▪ Skills, habits, conditioning, priming, and perceptual learning (“How”)
▪ Neither true or false
▪ Expressed through performance
What Have Studies Learned from H.M.?
• Memory storage: MTL is not the ultimate storage site. Memory gets reorganized
transferred to a more permanent storage site.
o Retrograde amnesia that extends to several decades before the surgery, albeit sparing memories
in earlier life.
• Further research shows that long-term memory is supported by distributed neocortical
regions (Squire & Wixted, 2011).
Discussions
• Plasticity
• The lesioned regions are not involved in intact functions?
• May not be able to control the (compensatory) strategies that patients may use in the
task.
• Cannot inform functional connectivity between the hippocampal and frontal regions.
The Hippocampus & Memory
• Memory encoding and organization; forming presentations and associations
• Supports the formation and recall of declarative / episode memory
The Prefrontal Cortex & Memory
• Control what is being encoded
• The connection between the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex supports task- /
context-appropriate retrieval.
• Cannot inform functional connectivity between the hippocampal and frontal regions.
The Baddeley Model of Working Memory
The Neural Substrates of WM