• Introduction: cognition, physiology, relation • Amnesia: retrograde, anterograde • Memory: multi-store, division, *amnesic patients, ways of distinguishing types of memory (KC, spiers maguire and burgess, vargha and khadem) • HM • Clive Wearing • Conclusion: cognition, physiology
Cognition, as defined by Neisser, is all the processes by which the brain transforms, reduces, elaborates, stores, retrieves, and uses information. Physiology refers to the structures of the human body and brain. The relationship between cognition and physiology is bi-directional, meaning that cognition can effect physiology and vice versa. Every cognitive aspect can be localized to a specific structure in the brain. This close interaction can have an effect on behavior. This essay will study 'memory ' as the cognition, and 'amnesia ' as the behavior.
Amnesia, simply put, is a loss of memory. There are two types of amnesia: retrograde, where information acquired before the onset of amnesia is forgotten, but new memories can be made, and anterograde, where information acquired after the onset of amnesia is forgotten, making the patient unable to form new memories.
Memory is defined by 'Baddeley ' as an active system which receives information from the senses, organizes and alters it, and stores it away, and then retrieves the information from storage. A model called the 'multi-store model ' by Atkinson and Shiffrin states that there are 2 stores of memory: short term (STM), and long term (LTM). Information is received by the sensory unit, and then sent to the STM. after this information is rehearsed, it is sent to the LTM. The researchers describe these 2 stores as 'unitary stores ', which differ in terms of capacity, duration, and encoding. The fact that the stores are 'unitary ' was refuted by later studies.
Later studies of memory prove that the LTM can be divided into 2: