Scientific American: Psychology
Infographic Activity 6.3: Tracking Memory in the Brain
Tracking Memory in the Brain
Whether with lab rats or case studies, psychologists have spent decades tracking the location of memory in the brain. What they’ve found so far should be no surprise: Memory is a complex system involving multiple structures and regions of the brain. Memory is formed, processed, and stored throughout the brain, and different types of memory have different paths. So to find memory in the brain, it helps to know your way around the brain’s structures. Remembering the amygdala’s role in processing basic emotion, for instance, can help you understand its role in processing the emotional content of memories.
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1. Which of the following famous patients, whose name was finally revealed after his death, gave experts an extremely important understanding of the role of the hippocampus in memory?
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2. Famed researcher Karl Lashley did extensive work examining the memory abilities of rats. What was the method he used with these laboratory participants?
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3. Lorelei has been having difficulties in very isolated memory areas lately. Specifically, she has difficulty with her formation of implicit memories, and her formation of emotional memories also seems to be impaired. Which part of her brain should a neurologist start by examining for possible problems?
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4. Thomas is a really unusual individual. He studies topics with great seriousness, gathering all of the information he can about a particular area of interest. When it comes time to retrieve that information, however, he has great difficulty. Even though he knows that he has the information in his memory, his friends often think he is just pretending to know more information than he does. Thomas’s difficulties with retrieval may be due to problematic functioning of his ________ cortex.
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5. Justin and Justine recently got married, and they are now shopping for their first house. While viewing on that is available, Justine comments to her husband that the family room of this house reminds her of the home in which she grew up. “It really is uncanny, the shape of the room is exactly the same, and the location of the fireplace, entrances, and mantle are identical. I swear this could be my old family room!” Justine’s ability to access these spatial memories is accounted for by activity in her ________ .
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6. Which of the following is the most accurate statement regarding the way the brain handles memory skills?
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7. In August of 1995, Jay and his girlfriend Paula visited Mammoth Cave national park in Kentucky. They went exploring in the caves, and Jay was particularly fascinated by the formation of stalactites and stalagmites. He remembers the way they looked very clearly, almost as if he was in the caves that very day. Which part of the brain would be responsible for such memories?
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8. When memories are moved to different parts of the cerebral cortex for long- term storage, memory ________ has occurred.
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