History of Memory

Author(s):  
Hans Markowitsch ◽  
Angelica Staniloiu

The historical roots of memory research—mainly from the period between 1870 and 1920—are described with emphasis on human memory. First, data from experimental psychology are reviewed; thereafter principal contributions from the old traditions of psychiatry and psychoanalysis are given and then relations between brain tissue damage and memory deficits are outlined. Experimental as well as clinical studies of that time already provided evidence for theoretical ideas on memory systems, which resemble those en vogue today. Furthermore, significant and still valid findings were reported on the contribution of bottleneck structures of the limbic system for mempry encoding. Among these, the mammillary bodies, thalamic nuclei, and the medial temporal lobe were most consistently mentioned. Furthermore, early findings from psychiatric patients revealed similar forms of dissociative states as found presently and indicated that these disease conditions occur much more in young than in older adults.

Author(s):  
Benjamin M. Seitz ◽  
Aaron P. Blaisdell ◽  
Cody W. Polack ◽  
Ralph R. Miller

Deeply rooted within the history of experimental psychology is the search for general laws of learning that hold across tasks and species. Central to this enterprise has been the notion of equipotentiality; that any two events have the same likelihood of being associated with one another as any other pair of events. Much work, generally summarized as ‘biological constraints on learning,’ has challenged this view, and demonstrates pre-existing relations between cues and outcomes, based on genes and prior experience, that influence potential associability. Learning theorists and comparative psychologists have thus recognized the need to consider how the evolutionary history as well as prior experience of the organism being studied influences its ability to learn about and navigate its environment. We suggest that current models of human memory, and human memory research in general, lack sufficient consideration of how human evolution has shaped human memory systems. We review several findings that suggest the human memory system preferentially processes information relevant to biological fitness, and highlight potential theoretical and applied benefits afforded by adopting this functionalist perspective.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 239821281772344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma J. Bubb ◽  
Lisa Kinnavane ◽  
John P. Aggleton

This review brings together current knowledge from tract tracing studies to update and reconsider those limbic connections initially highlighted by Papez for their presumed role in emotion. These connections link hippocampal and parahippocampal regions with the mammillary bodies, the anterior thalamic nuclei, and the cingulate gyrus, all structures now strongly implicated in memory functions. An additional goal of this review is to describe the routes taken by the various connections within this network. The original descriptions of these limbic connections saw their interconnecting pathways forming a serial circuit that began and finished in the hippocampal formation. It is now clear that with the exception of the mammillary bodies, these various sites are multiply interconnected with each other, including many reciprocal connections. In addition, these same connections are topographically organised, creating further subsystems. This complex pattern of connectivity helps explain the difficulty of interpreting the functional outcome of damage to any individual site within the network. For these same reasons, Papez’s initial concept of a loop beginning and ending in the hippocampal formation needs to be seen as a much more complex system of hippocampal–diencephalic–cingulate connections. The functions of these multiple interactions might be better viewed as principally providing efferent information from the posterior medial temporal lobe. Both a subcortical diencephalic route (via the fornix) and a cortical cingulate route (via retrosplenial cortex) can be distinguished. These routes provide indirect pathways for hippocampal interactions with prefrontal cortex, with the preponderance of both sets of connections arising from the more posterior hippocampal regions. These multi-stage connections complement the direct hippocampal projections to prefrontal cortex, which principally arise from the anterior hippocampus, thereby creating longitudinal functional differences along the anterior–posterior plane of the hippocampus.


Daedalus ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 144 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry R. Squire ◽  
John T. Wixted

A major development in understanding the structure and organization of memory was the identification of the medial temporal lobe memory system as one of the brain systems that support memory. Work on this topic began in the 1950s with the study of the noted amnesic patient H.M. and culminated in studies of an animal model of human memory impairment in the nonhuman primate. These discoveries opened new frontiers of research concerned with the functional specialization of structures within the medial temporal lobe, the existence of multiple memory systems, the process of memory consolidation, and the role of neural replay and sleep in the consolidation process. This work also led to new insights about how and where memories are ultimately stored in the brain. All of this research has improved our understanding of how memory is affected by normal aging and why it is so profoundly impaired by the pathological processes associated with dementia.


Leonardo ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 300-304
Author(s):  
Gisela Susanne Bahr ◽  
William H. Allen ◽  
Philip J. Bernhard ◽  
Stephen Wood

Human memory may be characterized by five dimensions: (1) large capacity; (2) associativity; (3) diversity of memory systems; (4) change over time; and (5) a unified memory experience. The organization and multidimensionality underlying memory can be represented with set theory. This offers a new mathematical perspective, which is the foundation for the cognitive memory architecture Ardemia. The authors present a relational database implementation of Ardemia that supports the creation of the artificial memory of Mr. Polly, the main character in H.G. Wells’s novel The History of Mr. Polly. In addition to the implementation of Mr. Polly’s artificial memory using TimeGlue, his memory is probed with a collection of everyday memory queries that are related to temporal and schema knowledge. The investigation of Mr. Polly’s knowledge suggests an alternative representation of schemas; rather than fixed structures or explicit associations, it is possible to model schemas as the results of the interaction between existing knowledge and remembering.


ASHA Leader ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 8-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nidhi Mahendra ◽  
Allegra Apple
Keyword(s):  

1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 209-211
Author(s):  
Robin McGilp ◽  
Brian Kidd ◽  
Cameron Stark ◽  
Tom Henderson

A retrospective investigation of case-notes compared 54 incidents of informal psychiatric in-patients being detained in hospital on an emergency basis with 66 incidents of discharge against medical advice (AMA). The characteristics of the two groups were compared. Detained patients were more likely to have been detained previously, to be suffering from a psychotic illness, and to have threats of violence or self-harm mentioned in their case-notes. AMA patients were more likely to have a history of substance abuse but were no more likely than the detained group to have been discharged AMA in the past. The results suggest that psychiatrists in this hospital are using current legislation on detention appropriately.


1989 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Praful Chandarana ◽  
Ashok Malla

The case history of a 17 year old girl, who initially presented with symptoms of bulimia and later developed dissociative states, is described. The possible relationship between bulimia and dissociative states is discussed in the context of psychometric tests and the underlying family dynamics.


Author(s):  
Jake Kurczek ◽  
Natalie Vanderveen ◽  
Melissa C. Duff

There is a long history of research linking the various forms of memory to different aspects of language. Clinically, we see this memory-language connection in the prevalence of language and communication deficits in populations that have concomitant impairments in memory and learning. In this article, we provide an overview of how the demands of language use and processing are supported by multiple memory systems in the brain, including working memory, declarative memory and nondeclarative memory, and how disruptions in different forms of memory may affect language. While not an exhaustive review of the literature, special attention is paid to populations who speech-language pathologists (SLPs) routinely serve. The goal of this review is to provide a resource for clinicians working with clients with disorders in memory and learning in helping to understand and anticipate the range of disruptions in language and communication that can arise as a consequence of memory impairment. We also hope this is a catalyst for more research on the contribution of multiple memory systems to language and communication.


2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (7) ◽  
pp. 1111-1121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristjan Kalm ◽  
Matthew H. Davis ◽  
Dennis Norris

Much of what we need to remember consists of sequences of stimuli, experiences, or events. Repeated presentation of a specific sequence establishes a more stable long-term memory, as shown by increased recall accuracy over successive trials of an STM task. Here we used fMRI to study the neural mechanisms that underlie sequence learning in the auditory–verbal domain. Specifically, we track the emergence of neural representations of sequences over the course of learning using multivariate pattern analysis. For this purpose, we use a serial recall task, in which participants have to recall overlapping sequences of letter names, with some of those sequences being repeated and hence learned over the course of the experiment. We show that voxels in the hippocampus come to encode the identity of specific repeated sequences although the letter names were common to all sequences in the experiment. These changes could have not been caused by changes in overall level of activity or to fMRI signal-to-noise ratios. Hence, the present results go beyond conventional univariate fMRI methods in showing a critical contribution of medial-temporal lobe memory systems to establishing long-term representations of verbal sequences.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mrs. Sushma. C ◽  
Dr. Meghamala. S. Tavaragi

Philippe Pinel a pioneer, a french psychiatrist, a physician, known as father of modern psychiatry, revolutions psychiatric care of patients with mental illness by introducing concept of moral treatment. Pinel rejected the then prevailing popular notion that mental illness was caused by demonic possession and stated that mental disorders could be caused by a variety of factors including psychological or social stress, congenital conditions, or physiological injury, psychological damage, or heredity. Philippe Pinel for the first time in history of psychiatric patients treated them humanly by unchaining patients known as madmen. This historic event was done for first time in Bicêtre Hospital in 1798 a Parisian insane asylum. In this article a brief history of life and work of pioneer Philippe Pinel is mentioned.


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