It’s a Boy!

1. It’s a Boy!

3. Long-term Memory Where does the dissociation between structures involved in LTM come from (in humans)?

4. Long-term Memory

5. Patient H.M. • “Loss of Recent Memory After Bilateral Hippocampal Lesions”, Scoville and Milner (1957) • onset of epilepsy at age ten, perhaps due to bike accident (wear a helmet!) • 1953 - underwent temporal lobectomy to reduce seizure activity

9. Patient H.M. • severe anterograde amnesia • temporally graded retrograde amnesia

10. Patient H.M.

11. Patient H.M. Memory and perceptual skills are dissociable. Lesions of the MTL produce amnesia for recent but not remote events. There are multiple long-term memory systems in the brain.

12. Long-term Memory • What’s the one thing that all of these people have in common? Lesions!

13. Long-term Memory • What about normal memory? • That is, memory in the “normal” brain

14. Long-term Memory The theory is that the MTL is temporally involved in declarative memory in normal humans…

16. Long-term Memory

17. Long-term Memory

18. Long-term Memory • functional imaging data from “normal” subjects confirms lesion studies • be skeptical!

19. Long-term Memory • What would it be like to possess the ability to remember everything?

20. Long-term Memory • Case study of S. (Solomon Shereshevskii) • Russian journalist • never took any notes, recalled everything verbatim • thought this was “normal”

21. Long-term Memory • Alexander Luria - Soviet neuropsychologist

22. Long-term Memory • Shereshevskii suffered from synaesthesia • stimulation of one sense leads to automatic stimulation of another • hearing a sound produces a visual experience • “I can see the music…”

23. Long-term Memory • random number table

24. Long-term Memory 1 this is a proud, well-built man 2 is a high-spirited woman 3 is a gloomy person 6 is a man with a swollen foot 7 is a man with a moustache 8 is a very stout woman - a sack within a sack. “As for the number 87, what I see is a fat woman and a man twirling his moustache”

25. Long-term Memory • memory consists of associative networks • perhaps mnemonists can create better networks To Kill A Mockingbird

26. Long-term Memory • memory consists of associative networks • perhaps mnemonists can create better networks highschool Mr. Lacey To Kill A Mockingbird English

27. Long-term Memory • memory consists of associative networks • perhaps mnemonists can create better networks skiing highschool mockingbird Mr. Lacey To Kill A Mockingbird canary bird English racism chicken Martin Luther King

28. Long-term Memory • What do you think the brain of someone that has this “super memory” would look like?

29. Long-term Memory • What if I told you it looked like this? Kim Peek

30. Long-term Memory • macroencephaly • no corpus callosum • no anterior/posterior commisure • degenerated cerebellum

31. Long-term Memory • Autism? • Motor disturbances • Overall I.Q. of 87 • despite this, he displays some amazing abilities…

32. Long-term Memory

33. Long-term Memory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2T45r5G3kA

34. Long-term Memory • 98% retention rate for reading material • reads on average 8 books a day (has approximately 9000 memorized!) • one page every 8-10 seconds • also has incredible memory for music, often remembering compositions only experienced once

35. Long-term Memory What could support this ability? “Does brain damage stimulate compensatory development in some other area of the brain, or does it simply allow otherwise latent abilities to emerge?”

36. Long-term Memory