STUDY DESIGN DOT POINT: the roles of the hippocampus, amygdala, neocortex, basal ganglia and cerebellum in long-term implicit and explicit memories
All our long-term memories are not formed and stored in any one specific brain location. There are, however, certain brain areas and structures with distinctive roles in the encoding, storage or retrieval of different types of explicit and implicit memories
Areas of the brain are all anatomically interconnected and interact with each other in various memory processes together with other structures and areas. They are all part of an integrated learning and memory system that extends throughout the brain.
All our long-term memories are not formed and stored in any one specific brain location. There are, however, certain brain areas and structures with distinctive roles in the encoding, storage or retrieval of different types of explicit and implicit memories
The hippocampus has a crucial role in the formation and encoding of new semantic and episodic long term memories.
Lasting memories are not created immediately at the time of a new experience. A period of time is required to ensure the experience becomes long lasting when transferred to long-term memory for storage. Consolidation is required for this to be achieved.
Consolidation is the neurological process of making a newly formed memory stable and enduring following a learning experience.
Declarative Long term memories are stored temporarily in the hippocampus before they are transferred to the cerebral cortex area associated with that memory
The amygdala's role is to process and regulate emotional reactions, particularly emotions such as fear and anger (including aggression).
People with damage to their amygdala are unable to acquire a conditioned fear response and so classically conditioned fear memories are consolidated by the amygdala. This an implicit memory that is not part of conscious awareness.
The presence of noradrenaline is believed to stimulate the amygdala to attach more emotional significance to the experience and signal the hippocampus to encode and ensure long-term storage of the relevant emotional details during the memory consolidation process.
The amygdala also contributes to the formation and storage of long-term explicit memories that are related to emotions.
The basal ganglia lying deep within the brain with extensive connections to the neocortex and other brain areas has a role in long-term implicit memories involving motor skills, unconscious habits, behaviours, or procedures .
Located at the base of the brain and at the rear, the cauliflower-shaped cerebellum that looks like a mini brain contains more neurons than the rest of the brain combined, even though it accounts for only 10% of the brain’s total volume.
The Cerebellum coordinates fine muscle movements, regulates posture and balance, and contributes to various perceptual and cognitive processes. It is responsible for what people refer to as muscle memory.
The cerebellum is involved in the encoding and temporary storage of implicit procedural memories for motor skills. It interacts with the neocortex to control motor responses. Long-term storage of well-learned motor responses are believed to be stored in the neocortex like many other memories.
The cerebellum forms and stores implicit memories of simple reflexes acquired through classical conditioning interacting with the Basal Ganglia.
Unlike most structures that connect only to a limited number of brain areas, the neocortex is connected to virtually all parts of the brain, including other cortical areas. This allows it to take part in almost everything we consciously think, feel and do. Basically, the neocortex is what makes us who we are as human beings and distinguishes us from other animals.
Once episodic and semantic memories are converted into a usable form in the hippocampus, they are stored within the neocortex to be retrieved for later use.
long-term explicit semantic and episodic memories are widely distributed throughout the neocortex. Their permanent storage tends to be in the areas where the relevant information was first processed.
For example, an episodic memory of a rock concert you may attend will have different components, such as the name of the band, visual images of the various band members, the band’s sounds and so on. It is therefore likely that the name of the band will be stored in a cortical area involved with language (frontal lobe), images in visual cortex (occipital lobe) and sounds in auditory cortex (temporal lobe). Furthermore, the different components are linked to ensure they do not remain a collection of separate memories.
a)adrenaline (epinephrine) as the neurohormone, and another for stating its role in activating the fight/flight, or arousal, response. Alternatively, students could state that adrenaline stimulates the release of noradrenaline (norepinephrine), which activates the amygdala. Two further marks were allocated for identifying the amygdala as the relevant brain region, with its role being the consolidation of emotional memories. S
b) Students needed to demonstrate basic knowledge of long-term potentiation (LTP) as a form of (experience dependent) neural plasticity that underlies the learning and memory of associations between stimuli, and to apply this knowledge accurately to Little Albert learning to associate the presence of the white rat with a fear response. Students could describe LTP as a form of neural plasticity that causes the strengthening of connections between neurons that are repeatedly coactivated (‘cells that fire together wire together’). In the case of Little Albert, LTP causes the neural signals representing the perception of the white rat and those representing the fear response to the loud noise to become associated and strengthened through repeated pairings occurrence of the two neural responses leads to their connection/association being ‘potentiated’).