• Neuropsychological research indicates that memory is not localised in a single area of the brain, but rather is supported by multiple systems and structures.
• The medial temporal lobe, particularly the hippocampus, is crucial for the consolidation of new memories.
• Long-term memories are stored throughout the neocortex, involving regions that originally encoded the perceptual information.
• Different brain regions are involved in different types of memory, for example, the right prefrontal cortex is activated during episodic retrieval while the left prefrontal cortex is activated during semantic retrieval.

10. Compare and contrast the human and animal models of the study of the neural basis of memory.

• Human studies often involve examining individuals with brain damage (lesions) to infer the function of specific brain areas. These studies can show what functions are lost or preserved after specific types of damage and are valuable to cognitive theories of memory.
• Animal models allow researchers to create controlled lesions in specific brain areas to study their effects on memory in a controlled setting, especially with primates where their brain structure is similar to humans. However, animal models may not fully replicate the complexities of the human brain.
• Both provide important information, and are most informative when used in combination.

11. What exactly do findings from memory studies with amnesic patients tell us about the way memory operates in non-amnesic people?

• Studies with amnesic patients reveal the existence of multiple memory systems.
• Amnesic patients often have difficulties forming new episodic memories, which highlights the role of the medial temporal lobe (and hippocampus in particular) in this process.
• Implicit learning, including procedural memory, is often preserved in amnesic patients, suggesting that these processes are mediated by brain structures separate from those supporting episodic memory.
• These findings help to understand memory as a system composed of different components with different locations in the brain.

12. Imagine what it would be like to recover from one of the forms of amnesia. Describe your impressions of and reactions to your newly recovered memory abilities.

• Recovering from amnesia would likely be a deeply disorienting experience, as the individual re-enters an existing world with a new or re-acquired sense of self and history. The re-access to memories may bring forth forgotten emotions and events.
• For anterograde amnesia, the ability to form new memories would be a profound change, and for retrograde amnesia, the re-emergence of old memories would be like re-discovering lost parts of oneself.
• It would likely take time to adjust to a world where there is a sense of continuity of past to present, given the lack of a reliable narrative structure or personal history.

13. How would you design an experiment to study the neural process of semantic memory by functional MRI technique?

• To study semantic memory with fMRI, you would need to design a task that involves the retrieval of semantic knowledge.
• Task design: The experiment could involve presenting participants with words or pictures and asking them to make judgments based on semantic categories or associations. For instance, subjects might be asked to identify whether a presented object is an animal or a tool.
• fMRI scan: During the task, brain activity would be measured using fMRI.
• Analysis: Researchers would look for brain regions that show increased activity during the semantic processing task, and compare these regions to the activation patterns seen during other types of tasks, for example, episodic tasks.
• This allows for the identification of specific brain regions involved in semantic memory retrieval, for example, the left prefrontal cortex and Broca’s area.

14. Patient H.M. and others with damage to the medial temporal lobe develop amnesia. What form of amnesia do they develop, and what information can they retain, and what does this tell us about how memories are encoded in the brain?

• Patients like H.M. primarily develop anterograde amnesia, meaning they have difficulty forming new long-term memories.
• They can generally retain existing memories and show normal performance on short-term memory tasks.
• They can also learn new motor skills, demonstrating preserved procedural memory.
• This indicates that the medial temporal lobe, especially the hippocampus, is crucial for the consolidation of new episodic memories, but not for short-term or implicit learning. The storage of long-term memories must happen elsewhere in the brain.