About the first article on amnesia.. are the people with amnesia able to remember "how to's" more than things that are more factual due to different regions of the brain not functioning properly? The idea that they could remember how to perform a certain action but not remember factual events (the words they were shown) reminded me of something we discussed in Affective Neuroscience the other day.. we learned about how damage to the hippocampus or the amygdala can affect how a person reacts to or perceives a stimulus... for example, if there is damage done to the amygdala, the person will be able to be aware of the arousing (fear-inducing) qualities of the stimulus that they are faced with, but are unable to produce the typical physiological responses evoked by arousing stimuli. If the person's hippocampus is damaged, they will not be aware of the arousing qualities of the stimulus, but they will produce the physiological reponses. This concept seems similar to the idea of amnesia and being able to learn tasks that are behavioral, but unable to learn explicit information. Are the general concepts somewhat related?
Sidenote... I love how the classes I am taking overlap.. it is so cool! =)
-Taylor Wiesmann-
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Taylor, great questions! It depends on the type of amnesia (which we’ll be discussing more during the language & memory disorders topic). In the case of H.M., he had procedural memory (the “how-to’s”) but couldn’t move events (episodic memory) from short-term to long-term memory. The variations in types of memory that are intact are due to brain structural damage, and so we’ve learned a lot from patients like H.M. and others with various brain traumas and injuries. You’re right about what happens with amygdala damage – people still do report experiencing fear, but physiologically it doesn’t seem like they are. The hippocampus is important for creating new memories, like autobiographical and declarative (factual) memories and moving them to long-term memory. Since H.M. had his removed, his short-term memory was okay, but long-term memory for events and facts was gone -- yet he could remember how to do certain tasks! So I would say that the concepts are somewhat related as far as different brain areas/structures being responsible for specific types of memory or reactions.
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