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Essay / We are able to explore the brain's other capabilities. The two main distinctions of long-term memory are declarative/explicit memory and non-declarative/implicit memory. Information from the old store that requires conscious recollection. This memory can be divided into two subdivisions: episodic memory and semantic memory. Episodic refers to memories of personal experiences, including the time and place of those events. While semantic memory retains the knowledge we have acquired through education, such as world facts and history. Studies and observations on subdivisions carried out by Spiers et al (2001) revealed that the two were significantly different. He examined 147 cases of amnesic patients with damage to the hippocampal region and found that in all cases there was impairment of episodic memory, but no substantial damage to semantic memory. However, why this happens is still under investigation. On the other hand, nondeclarative memory stores learned skills that can be retrieved unconsciously, allowing individuals to perform actions by rote. This can also be subdivided into two categories: procedural memory and priming. Procedural memory involves skills such as riding a bike or tying shoelaces; these motor actions require no conscious thought or effort in most cases. Finally, priming refers to how prior exposure of a stimulus affects the processing of a later stimulus, with the two sharing a relationship. For example, an individual who is presented with the auditory stimulus of a dog allows a subsequent auditory stimulus of a dog to become easier to recognize, due to their connection. So the first audio would be called prime, which makes it easier to process the audio when it is presented the second time. Henry Gustav Molaison (1926-2008), colloquially known as HM, was a patient suffering from amnesia, from whom particularly influential studies in the development of the understanding of memory were developed. The patient suffered from extreme epilepsy, which resulted in the surgical removal of his medial temporal lobe and parts of the hippocampus and amygdala. Through the operation, his epilepsy improved, but the consequences manifested themselves in the form of anterograde amnesia, which included his ability to create new memories. Despite his difficulty in forming new declarative memories, his procedural and short-term memory, which Alan Baddeley (1974) calls working memory, remained intact. Brenda Milner (1957) also learned that her digit count was completely normal. She observed him when she tested his ability to repeat speaking numbers, which he was able to do perfectly - however, his retention of these numbers was only for a certain number of a few. seconds, due to brain damage. Milner also examined HM's motor skills by presenting him with a mirror tracing task, in which he drew the outline of images in front of him by simply looking at the mirror. His performance on the task gradually improved over time, as he was able to unconsciously retrieve this skill memory, however, he was unable to actually remember learning or practicing it each time. This shows that there may be some leakage from short-term to long-term memory, especially when it comes to unconsciously learned skills. HM's observation led to the belief that ablation or damage of the hippocampus can lead to long-term memory deficit. HM haswas able to provide us with some of the first information on anterograde amnesia and the case study shows that long term memory is not necessarily indefinite and is only stored in the hippocampus since HM was able to recall memories before his operation . Double dissociation has also been established through studies of amnesia, in this case it is where short term memory and long term memory are connected in such a way that both can suffer damage but the other remains intact. Amnesia patients typically suffer damage to their long-term memory with little or no impairment to their short-term memory. This is usually caused by damage to the medial temporal lobe and hippocampus, thereby affecting episodic memory. This can also happen the other way around but it is rarer; patients can experience short-term memory damage without long-term memory impairment. This is usually caused by damage to the parietal and temporal lobes. Furthermore, patients with semantic dementia lack semantic memory retrieval while their episodic memory is unaffected. On the other hand, amnesic patients have an episodic memory deficit but their semantic memory remains rather intact. In conclusion, the various studies on amnesia have provided us with crucial information, essential to the development of convincing theories on memory. Psychologists and neurologists have been able to systematically divide and organize the different sectors that make up memory, their differences, and the distinct ways in which they work together to retain information. It also helped in understanding the functionality of the brain in relation to memory. However, as our knowledge is mainly based on case studies and their results, it is difficult to generalize to a larger population, as these studies are largely based on single individual cases. In contrast, anterograde amnesia is described as the inability to acquire and retain new information after the development of amnesia. This type of amnesia represents a breakdown of the retention processes established from the second stage, because the brain completely lacks the ability to transfer information into long-term memory. Patients are able to gather information, but it is retained for a significantly shorter period of time, even if only a few seconds. Although it is the worse of the two types because there is no cure, it is at the same time the most interesting aspect of amnesia because we are able to explore the other capabilities of the brain. The two main distinctions of long-term memory are declarative/explicit memory and non-declarative/implicit memory. Information from the old store that requires conscious recollection. This memory can be divided into two subdivisions: episodic memory and semantic memory. Episodic refers to memories of personal experiences, including the time and place of those events. While semantic memory retains the knowledge we have acquired through education, such as world facts and history. Studies and observations on subdivisions carried out by Spiers et al (2001) revealed that the two were significantly different. He examined 147 cases of amnesic patients with damage to the hippocampal region and found that in all cases there was impairment of episodic memory, but no substantial damage to semantic memory. However, why this happens is still under investigation. On the other hand, non-declarative memory stores acquired skills that can be retrieved unconsciously,.
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