A
Absentmindedness—When a person intends to perform one action but unintentionally does another.
Absorption—The continual transfer of the contents of working memory into long-term memory.
Accessibility of a trace—The ease with which a trace can be found in memory; sometimes believed to be due to the number of cues present.
Acetylcholine—A neurotransmitter that can affect memory processes (see scopolamine) and found in reduced levels in the brains of Alzheimer’s victims.
Acoustic encoding—Encoding of sounds or of acoustic information in verbal stimuli.
Activation of a trace—The increase in the strength of a trace in long-term memory due to rehearsing the trace in working memory.
Acronym—Arranging a list of words so that the first letters of the words themselves make a word. Acronyms are usually easy to learn and remember (see first letter mnemonic).
Acrostic—A procedure to learn a target word by making a sentence in which each word of the sentence begins with one of the letters that makes up the target word.
Action potential—The level of electrical stimulation of a nerve that, when exceeded, leads an electrical impulse to travel throughout a cell body to the axon branches which release neurotransmitters into the synapse.
Activation of a trace—The increase in the strength of a trace in long-term memory that results when information in the trace, or related to a trace, is presented.
Adrenaline (epinephrine)—A hormone that may enhance learning.
Adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH)—A hormone produced by the adrenal glands that in small doses may enhance learning.
Agnosia—An inability to recognize objects. Agreements to perform memory tasks. Dividing future memory tasks into parts and allocating them among individuals.
Alzheimer’s disease—A disorder that typically leads to an obvious loss in short-term memory and long-term memory.
Alzheimer’s Disease Associated Protein (ADAP) —A protein that seems to appear only in the tissue of people with Alzheimer’s. It has been found in both the brain and spinal fluid.
Amnesia syndrome—A loss of an ability to form long-term memories.
Amphetamine—A stimulant that may enhance learning, especially when fatigue is present.
Amygdala—Part of the limbic system and located near the temporal lobes, the amygdala lies deep within the cerebrum and is responsible for basic social behaviors and the sex drive.
Amyloid precursor protein (APP)—A normal, essential substance made by brain cells that contain beta amyloid. In Alzheimer’s, APP is cut and releases beta amyloid. Beta amyloid then forms clumps called senile plaque.
Anterograde amnesia—The failure to learn, i.e., form long-term memories.
Aneurysm – a blood-filled sac formed by disease related stretching of an artery or blood vessel.
Anoxia – an absence of oxygen supply to an organ’s tissues leading to cell death.
Aphasia—A difficulty in expressing and/or understanding language.
Apolipoprotein E (ApoE)—A protein that ferries cholesterol through the bloodstream. The ApoE gene has three variants (or alleles), E2, E3, and E4. Each person inherits an allele from each parent. Ninety percent of the population inherit one copy of ApoE3, and 60 percent inherit two copies.
Applicability of manipulations—The particular tasks for which mental manipulation will be effective.
Apoptosis – cell death that occurs naturally as part of normal development, maintenance, and renewal of tissues within an organism.
Arachnoid Membrane – one of the three membranes that cover the brain; it is between the pia mater and the dura. Collectively, these three membranes form the meninges.
Apraxia—A disorder due to brain damage that impairs a person’s ability to move.
Architecture of memory—The arrangement of components of the memory system.
Arousal—A general increase in a person’s energy that enhances capability to pay attention and to perform.
Arts of memory—Paintings, sculptures, or maps that have been designed to aid memory.
Assessment of Memory Abilities—Identification of strengths and weaknesses at memory tasks as revealed by formal testing by a psychologist directed procedure.
Associationism—The view that memory is ultimately explained by forming associations between items.
Associations of a trace—Associations join traces to one another.
Associative Mental Manipulations—Techniques that lead traces to be connected together in long-term memory.
Attention—The process of orienting to the world around us and the contents of working memory.
Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder—(ADHD) is a diagnosis applied to children and adults who consistently display certain characteristic behaviors over a period of time, including inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. People who are inattentive may have a hard time learning something new.
Attention, distribution—The intensity of attention varies across memory traces.
Attention, level—The level of the intensity of attention.
Attribute mental manipulations—Techniques that foster comprehension of aspects of material to be learned.
Attributes of a trace—One of the aspects of a trace affected by mental manipulation.
Autistic savant—A person who demonstrates extraordinary mental ability in some area but also suffers retardation.
Autobiographical memory—Memory for the events of a person’s life.
Availability heuristic—Judging the frequency of an event based on how easily instances of the event can be remembered.
Availability of a trace—Whether a trace is in memory or not.
Axon and Dendrite—Within a neuron, you have the receiving ends, the dendrites, which process the incoming electrical/chemical signals and relay the information to the nucleus/cell body of the axon and tell it whether or not it needs to transmit the signal down the axon to continue the signal and propagate it to another dendrite of another neuron.
B
B-endorphin—A natural opiate that is released in the brain in times of stress and pain, affecting memory.
Backward retrieval strategy—A search of memory from the most recent memories to those that are most distant.
Bad memory habits—Automatic approaches to memory tasks that impair memory performance.
Basal ganglia—A set of five structures beneath the cortex responsible for forming small, individual movements into smooth sequences. The basal ganglia get their input from the cortex, via the pons and thalamus; and in turn they send directions to the spinal cord through the midbrain to enact these coordinated motions. Generally, the ganglia manage fine motor coordination, such as the intricate movements of the fingertips while writing.
Benzodiazepines (BZ)—Tranquilizers (such as Librium and Valium) that are used to treat psychological symptoms (e.g., anxiety, depression, and tension) and that also impair memory.
Biological theoretical perspective—The view that memory is due just to biological processes.
Bottom-up processing—Tasks that require elaborative processes (also called ‘data driven’).
Brain death – an irreversible cessation of measurable brain function.
Brain stem—This primitive portion of the brain consists of four major structures:Ê the medulla oblongata, the pons, and the midbrain, and cerebellum. The thalamus, hypothalamus, pineal gland, and the reticular formation make up the upper brain stem. The brain stem is the major connection between the cerebrum and the spinal cord, and is mainly responsible for regulating functions vital to survival. However, there is evidence that the simplest of emotional responses, such as fear, startling, and pleasure, originate in this area of the brain.
Broca’s aphasia—An inability in articulating words due to brain damage.
Brown-Perterson distracter technique—A procedure for assessing short-term memory after a person engages in a test that makes it impossible to rehearse (such as counting backwards).
C
Capillary—a tiny blood vessel. The brain has billions of capillaries that carry oxygen, glucose (the brain’s principal source of energy), nutrients, and hormones to brain cells so they can do their work. Capillaries also carry away carbon dioxide and cell waste products.
Cell assemblies—Groups of interconnected neurons hypothesized to retain memories (see macrocolumn and neural nets).
Central executive (processor)—A component of the memory system that directs the mental process that underlies memory performance.
Cerebellum— Latin for “little brain”: the cerebellum—The bulbic structure located below and behind the occipital lobe of the cerebral cortex—is composed of two small hemispheres that regulate muscular coordination, voluntary movement, and balance. It also gives us our sense of our own bodies and where they are located in space, called “proprioception.” For example, without the cerebellum, we would not recognize how far apart our legs were from each other, or where our limbs were located as they rested. Some theories hold that the cerebellum retains rudimentary memory capacity for reflexes and sequences of motor activity—what we would call “muscle memory,” such as those required to ride a bicycle again after years have gone by since the last time one did. The cerebellum is connected to the brain stem via three bundles of nerve fibers called peduncles.
Cerebral cortex—Composed of neuron-dense “gray matter,”the cerebral cortex is often called the cortex or “the brain”. The cortext consists of the outer layer of the cerebrum. The brain has a surprisingly large surface area of 230-465 square inches. To fit all that valuable gray matter into our relatively small cranium, the cortex is pleated into folds (gyri) and grooves (sulci). The largest of these folds and grooves serve as dividers, separating the brain into two distinct hemispheres, each with four lobes.
The cerebral cortex, is responsible for all higher thought processes. It manages and integrates information from all of our sensory organs, initiates movement and more complex actions, controls emotions, warehouses our memories, and gives us the ability to plan and think abstractly.
Recent research also suggests that grey matter volume in the ‘cerebellum’ predicts cognitive ability, and keeping those cerebellar networks active may be the key to keeping cognitive decline at bay.
Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) – the fluid that bathes and protects the brain and spinal cord.
Cerebrum—The uppermost portion of the forebrain is called the cerebrum. It is the “thinking” center of the brain. It is often regarded as the “brain.”
Characteristic features—Features of concept that identify the characteristics of instances of a particular concept (see defining features).
Childhood amnesia—The inability to remember events from very early childhood (same as infantile amnesia).
Chromosome—a threadlike structure in the nucleus of a cell that contains DNA. DNA sequences make up genes. Most human cells have 23 pairs of chromosomes containing approximately 30,000 genes.
Chunking—The combining of information into chunks to facilitate storage in STM.
Clinical trial—a research study involving humans that rigorously tests safety, side effects, and how well a medication or behavioral treatment works.
Closed Head Injury – an injury that occurs when the head suddenly and violently hits an object but the object does not break through the skull.
Clustering—The organization of items into groups in memory based on membership in the same category (see subjective organization).
Coding of information—Identifying the features of a stimulus and storing them in memory.
Cognitive functions—all aspects of conscious thought and mental activity, including learning, perceiving, making decisions, and remembering.
Cognitive interview (guided recall)—A collection of retrieval strategies that sometimes increases recall.
Cognitive maps—A mental map of the environment.
Coma – a state of profound unconsciousness caused by disease, injury, or poison.
Compressive Cranial Neuropathies – degeneration of nerves in the brain caused by pressure on those nerves.
Compliance—The performance of a memory task because the person is not motivated to do so.
Components of memory—The parts of the memory system.
Computerized axial tomography (CAT)—A scan of the brain that sends a rapidly rotating X-ray beam through the patient’s head, taking pictures of the brain from different angles (see MRI and PET scans).
Conceptually driven tasks—Tasks that require active organization and elaborative processes (also called ‘top down’).
Concussion – injury to the brain caused by a hard blow or violent shaking, causing a sudden and temporary impairment of brain function, such as a short loss of consciousness or disturbance of vision and equilibrium.
Condition for memory tasks—Physical fitness that affects a person’s ability to pay attention and perform memory tasks.
Confabulation—When a person makes up a false story, without doing so intentionally, concerning a past event in his or her life (see false memory syndrome).
Connectionism—The view that memory is explained by connections between items.
Consolidation—The physiological process that progressively transforms a temporary memory into a permanent memory.
Context dependent memory—Superior recall which occurs when it is attempted in the presence of a context that was also present during learning (see encoding specificity principle, state dependent memory, mood dependent memory, and transfer-appropriate processing).
Contrecoup – a contusion caused by the shaking of the brain back and forth within the confines of the skull.
Contusion – distinct area of swollen brain tissue mixed with blood released from broken blood vessels.
Control processes—Flexible strategies used to facilitate the formation of long-term memories (see maintenance rehearsal and storage rehearsal).
Conversational flow manipulations—Techniques that affect the flow of conversation to give a person extra time for memory processing.
Corpus Collosum— A band of nerve fibers that connects the left and right hemispheres and transmits information between the hemispheres.
Cortisol—The major natural glucocorticoid (GC) in humans. A steroid hormone produced by the adrenal cortex, it is the primary stress hormone and released from the adrenal gland in response to ACTH, a hormone from the pituitary gland in the brain. Excess or long duration stress is a contributing factor to memory fitness.
Cranial nerves—Either motor or sensory, these nerves emerge from the base of the brain in 12 symmetrical pairs and are connected to the head, neck, eyes, ears, mouth, and throat. Each nerve delivers messages to and from the medulla oblongata. They are referred to clinically by roman numerals, and each has an associated function that is as follows:
I: Olfactory nerve; linked to smell.
II: Optic nerve; linked to vision.
III: Oculomotor nerve; linked to eye movement and pupil dilation.
IV: Trochlear nerve; linked to eye movement.
V: Trigeminal nerve; relays sensory information from the face and head, and sends commands to the chewing muscles.
VI: Abducens nerve; linked to eye movement.
VII: Facial nerve; relays sensory information about taste and hearing, and controls the facial muscles.
VIII: Vestibulocochlear nerve; linked with hearing and balance.
IX: Glossopharyngeal nerve; relays sensory information from the tastebuds, tongue, tonsil, and pharynx, and controls some swallowing muscles.
X: Vagus nerve; controls the sensory, motor, and autonomic functions of the internal organs.
XI; Spinal accessory nerve; controls the muscles involved with head movement.
XII: Hypoglosseal nerve; controls the movement of tongue muscles.
Cueing—The effect of physical cues that improves learning or remembering.
Cue-dependent forgetting—An inability to remember because retrieval cues are not present.
Cue gathering—Looking or listening for things that might facilitate a person’s learning or remembering.
Cue-word method (for study of autobiographical memory)—A task that requires a person to recall a personal memory that is associated with a cue word.
Cultural memory tasks—Memory tasks that are common or important to a certain culture.
Cumulative rehearsal—The rehearsing of a set of items over and over (see noncumulative rehearsal).
D
Decay of a trace (law of disuse)—The erosion or fading of a memory trace. Decay theory. A theory of forgetting that assumes memories grow weaker and weaker with the passage of time.
Declarative memory—A kind of memory that is directly accessible to conscious recollection.
Deep Vein Thrombosis – formation of a blood clot deep within a vein.
Defining features—Features of concept that allow an object to be considered an instance of a particular concept.
Deja vu—The feeling that one has already experienced a situation while knowing that she or he has never encountered the situation before.
Dementia—Disorders referring to a decline in cognitive function resulting in a significant loss of intellectual abilities, such as memory capacity, to the extent that it interferes with daily life and activities and with social or occupational functioning. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form.
Dementia Pugilistica – brain damage caused by cumulative and repetitive head trauma; common in career boxers.
Dendrites—Branches of a neuron that dispose a neuron to fire when stimulated by neurotransmitters.
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)—Chemical chains that retain genetic codes and that some people assume are involved in memory. It is thought of as defining blue print details for how everything in the body and brain work.
Depressed Skull Fracture – a fracture occurring when pieces of broken skull press into the tissues of the brain.
Depression—The emotional state of being down that often leads to lessened memory ability (see anterograde amnesia).
Dichotic listening task—The task of listening to simultaneous messages (e.g., a list of letters or words) to each ear.
Digit span—A test in which a series of digits are presented and the person being tested must try to recite them in the order of presentation.
Directed forgetting (suppression)—The conscious attempt to forget a memory by deliberately trying not to think about it.
Dysarthria – inability or difficulty articulating words due to emotional stress, brain injury, paralysis, or spasticity of the muscles needed for speech.
Displacement of memory—The hypothesis that new information can push old information out of memory.
Dissociative memory disorder—Where memory of one’s identity is forgotten because of intense memories; (also called functional amnesia; see multiple personality disorder, psychogenic amnesia and psychogenic fugue).
Distinctiveness hypothesis—The hypothesis that deeper levels of processing result in better and more distinctive learning than shallower levels of processing (see elaboration hypothesis).
Distortion of a trace—An alteration of a memory trace.
Distribution of practice—When a person distributes his or her studying over time.
Dressing apraxia—A disorder in which people forget how to put on their clothes.
Dura – a tough, fibrous membrane lining the brain; the outermost of the three membranes collectively called the meninges.
Dynamics of social interaction—The pace and content of conversation, which affects the encoding and retrieval of information.
E
Easterbrook hypothesis—The hypothesis that increased arousal narrows attention, focusing on fewer cues in the environment than normal.
Efficiency of memory technique use—The speed with which a person is able to execute a manipulation.
Elaboration hypothesis—The hypothesis that deeper levels of processing result in better learning than shallower levels of processing.
Elaborative rehearsal (Type II rehearsal)—Repetition of information in order to analyze it more deeply forms a long-term memory of the information.
Electroconvulsive shock—Electrical stimulation to the brain used to treat depression that induces a brief retrograde amnesia.
Encoding—An incidental form of learning. Another way to say that information is put into the brain for later retrieval.
Encoding specificity principle—Superior recall of items that occurs when recall is attempted in the presence of cues that were also present during learning (see context dependent memory, state dependent memory, mood dependent memory, and transfer-appropriate processing).
Engram—The neuronal or chemical material in which a memory trace resides.
Environmental activity—A behavior that focuses on objects or events in order to stimulate, or even substitute for, memory.
Epilepsy—A disorder due to brain seizures that affect memory capabilities.
Epinephrine (Adrenaline)—A hormone that may enhance learning.
Exhaustive serial search—A search of memory item by item.
Experimental approach—The study of memory through experimentation.
Expert knowledge—The knowledge of experts that enables them to carry out impressive memory feats.
Explicit encoding (Intentional)—Trying to register information in memory.
Explicit remembering—Intentional recall.
External memory aids—The use of objects and devices to remember to perform memory tasks (see internal memory aids and commercial memory aids, reminding services and external knowledge sources).
F
False memory syndrome—The recall of fictitious events, usually traumatic, with the belief that the events are genuine.
Feedback about memory performance—Praise or criticism from others about one’s memory performance.
First letter mnemonic—(see acronym).
Flashbulb memories—Recollections of highly emotional events that some believe are especially well registered in memory and immune from forgetting.
Forebrain—This center of all higher functions is made up of the cerebrum, as well as the underlying structures of the thalamus, hypothalamus, and limbic system.
Forgetting—The decrease in remembering with the passage of time.
Formal assessment of memory abilities—Determination of a person’s memory abilities on the basis of performance of a variety of tests.
Forward retrieval strategy—A search of the most early memories on up to the present.
Free recall learning—When a person attempts to recall a list of items in any order.
Frontal lobe—This foremost lobe in each of the two hemispheres of the brain is responsible for executive control or supervision of cognition, language, associative processes including learning and memory, and motor coordination. Damage to this lobe of the brain can be devastating, and may result in paralysis, inability to plan sequences of complex movements, loss of spontaneity and flexibility of thought, problems focusing attention, mood changes and social interaction difficulties, and even the inability to speak or to understand language.
Some of the major substructures of the frontal lobe include:
precentral gyrus: the brain’s motor center, which is directly connected to the somatosensory inputs in the parietal lobe and which is responsible for processing and initiating all motor functions.
Broca’s area: This area, located on the left side of the frontal lobe, processes language by controlling the mouth, lips, and larynx (together responsible for the production of speech).
The majority of the frontal lobe is dedicated to what are called associative areas —areas of the brain from which we receive our ability to think abstractly and creatively, solve problems, reflect upon events, and make judgments.
Functional amnesia—The forgetting of one’s personal identity due to the repression of intense memories (also called dissociative memory disorder).
Functional reorganisation – changes in how tasks are organised in the brain
As we develop, brain areas becomes specialised for specific tasks and ways of making sense of the world. For example, the very back of your brain is labelled the visual cortex, because it deals with sight.
If experience changes dramatically or parts of the brain are damaged, areas previously specialised for a certain function can ‘take on’ some of the work of other areas, without necessarily detectably changing in structure. For example, the ‘visual cortex’ in blind people can be used to perceive touch.
Functional reorganisation—often inferred without directly measuring the brain. For example, immediately after brain injury, someone might not be able to speak because the areas previously used for language are damaged. However, speech may be regained or it might improve, depending on the extent of damage, as the brain has a limited ability to reorganise the share of work to undamaged areas.
G
Gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA)—A neurotransmitter substance that can affect retention.
Gene—the biologic unit of heredity passed from parent to child. Genes are segments of DNA and contain instructions that tell a cell how to make specific proteins.
Generation effect—Superior recall for items that have been generated by oneself.
Genetic risk factor—a variant in a cell’s DNA that does not cause a disease by itself but may increase the chance that a person will develop a disease.
Gestalt Psychology—The theoretical perspective that memory is affected by the patterns of items which are acquired.
Gist—The essential idea inherent in a message in memory.
Glasgow Coma Scale – a clinical tool used to assess the degree of consciousness and neurological functioning – and therefore severity of brain injury – by testing motor responsiveness, verbal acuity, and eye opening.
Glial cell—a specialized cell that supports, protects, or nourishes nerve cells.
Global Aphasia – a condition in which patients suffer severe communication disabilities as a result of extensive damage to portions of the brain responsible for language.
Hypermetabolism – a condition in which the body produces too much heat energy.
Group pressures on memory performance—The influence of others’ expectations that may lead a person to doubt or disavow what they remember.
H
Habitual prospective memory tasks—Prospective memory tasks that people engage in on a regular basis, e.g., brushing your teeth (see episodic prospective tasks).
Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery (HR)—This battery presents a series of standardized cognitive tests, some of which assess memory performance.
Head injury—Brain damage due to a severe blow that penetrates the brain or causes damage within the skull.
Hematoma – heavy bleeding into or around the brain caused by damage to a major blood vessel in the head.
Hemorrhagic Stroke – stroke caused by bleeding out of one of the major arteries leading to the brain.
Hierarchical knowledge—Knowledge structures that help people organize what they know into various domains.
Hierarchical network—A network in which different concepts are connected.
Hindbrain—Also called the brain stem, this most primitive portion of the brain consists of the brain stem and houses both the medulla, pons, and cerebellum. It is responsible only for the most basic of life functions, such as maintaining hearbeat, blood pressure, and breathing, as well as some rudimentary, survival-based emotions like fear.
Hippocampus—A structure in the brain that plays a major role in learning and memory and is involved in converting short-term to long-term memory. Located deep within the cerebral cortex in the limbic system, near the temporal lobes, making this structure vital to memory formation and retrieval.
Huntington’s disease—A dementia that results in abnormal bodily movements, postures, and gaits.
Hypothalamus—A structure in the brain under the thalamus that monitors activities such as body temperature and food intake. Weighing only 4 grams, this structure is located at the base of the brain. The hypothalamus guides the autonomic nervous system’s regulation of the function of internal organs, controls the endocrine system’s release of hormones, and fuels basic biological drives including sex, hunger, thirst, sleep, and rudimentary emotional responses like pleasure and fear. It also plays a role in regulating body temperature, and helps coordinate the activity of the pituitary gland and the brain stem. It is your hypothalamus that keeps your “biological clock” ticking, giving you a sense of the passage of time even when such external clues as light and temperature are absent.
Hypothyroidism – decreased production of thyroid hormone leading to low metabolic rate, weight gain, chronic drowsiness, dry skin and hair, and/or fluid accumulation and retention in connective tissues.
Hypoxia – decreased oxygen levels in an organ, such as the brain; less severe than anoxia.
I
Iconic memory—A memory that provides a brief but highly accurate record for stimuli impinging on sensory receptors.
Idiot savant—A mentally retarded person who is nevertheless capable of performing impressive memory feats (see autistic savants, mono-savant, savant syndrome, talented savants and prodigious savants).
Immediate memory—The retention of items for about 30 seconds or less (see STM or primary memory).
Immediate Seizures – seizures that occur within 24 hours of a traumatic brain injury.
Implicit memory tasks—Tasks that do not involve conscious remembering of past learning but do involve performance that shows such learning occurred.
Implicit remembering—Unconscious influence of information on recall.
Incidental manipulations—Behaviors that raise attention level in general.
Incremental learning—Learning bit by bit, rather than all at once.
Infantile amnesia—The inability to remember very early childhood.
Information-processing approach—The theoretical view that memory is best explained as a computer, where learning and remembering are done by mental programs.
Instructional variables—Aspects of the directions on how to perform a memory task.
Intentional forgetting—Deliberate forgetting due to inattention to the memory trace.
Intentional manipulations—Behaviors that raise attention by consciously focusing on certain details of the information encountered in the task.
Interference hypothesis of repression—The explanation that repression is due to the anxiety associated with the repressed memories.
Interference theory of forgetting—A theory that assumes forgetting occurs because the primary memory trace to be remembered is confused with one or more other memories.
Internal memory aids—The use of mental strategies to remember to perform retrospective and prospective memory tasks (see external memory aids).
Intracerebral Hematoma – bleeding within the brain caused by damage to a major blood vessel.
Intracranial Pressure – buildup of pressure in the brain as a result of injury.
Ischemic Stroke – stroke caused by the formation of a clot that blocks blood flow through an artery to the brain.
Intrusion—An item recalled incorrectly.
J
Jamais vu—The feeling that a person has never experienced a situation while the person knows that she or he actually has encountered the situation before.
K
Kinesthetic cues—Information about muscular activity.
Knowledge base—The information that one knows about a topic.
Korsakoff’s syndrome—Memory impairment due to frontal lobe damage, often the result of prolonged alcoholism.
L
Language of Memory—Common words or colloquial expressions that describe memory performance.
Late-onset Alzheimer’s disease—the most common form of AD. It occurs in people aged 60 and older.
Law of Contiguity—The law that two events or experiences which occur closely in time will become associated with each other.
Law of disuse (decay theory)—The explanation of forgetting as due to the weakening of habits over time.
Leading questions—Questions that suggest the answer to be given.
Learning—An intentional form of memory registration.
Left hemisphere—Though many of its functions overlap in complex ways with those of the right hemisphere, the left hemisphere is more dominant in the areas of logic and rationality, sequential and analytical thought, mathematics, and especially language, comprehension and speech.
Levels of processing approach—The perspective that memories are learned by processing material.
Lexical decision task—The task of deciding whether a string of letters makes up a word or not.
Limbic system—A brain region that links the brain stem with the higher reasoning elements of the cerebral cortex. Comprised of olfactory (smell) cortex, hippocampus, amygdala, and parts of the thalamus and hypothalamus, this forebrain structure is linked to primitive, emotionally driven behaviors and motivation. It is also important to the control of the body’s visceral muscles— those located in the digestive tract and various organs. This system integrates emotional memories with associated smells, like the familiar smell of freshly-baked cookies: Comprised of some primitive portions of the cortex along with parts of the thalamus and hypothalamus, this forebrain structure is linked to emotionally driven behaviors and motivation. It is also important to the control of the body’s visceral muscles — those located in the digestive tract and various organs.
Link mnemonic—A technical mnemonic in which a person visualizes each successive pair of a set of objects by interacting, forming a mental link from one object to another.
Linkword system—A mnemonic in which foreign language vocabulary is learned by forming an image of an object suggested by the foreign word in interaction with an image suggested by the English word.
Locked-In Syndrome – a condition in which a patient is aware and awake, but cannot move or communicate due to complete paralysis of the body.
Long-term memory system—The component of the memory system that retains information indefinitely (see secondary memory).
Long-term recency effect—The superior recall of the final items in a list.
Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery (LN)—A battery that presents a series of standardized cognitive tests, some of which assess memory performance.
M
Macrocolumns—Interconnected neurons which function together to record engrams (see cell assemblies and neural nets).
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)—A diagnostic and research technique that uses magnetic fields to generate a computer image of internal structures in the body. MRIs are very clear and are particularly good for imaging the brain and soft tissues. An MRI scan is where strong magnetic fields surround the head and bombard it with radio-frequency pulses whereupon the brain emits signals that the computer uses to develop pictures of the brain (see CAT and PET scans).
Maintenance rehearsal (Type I rehearsal)—Shallow repetition of information in order to just keep it in consciousness, but not learn it (see elaborative rehearsal).
Mamillary bodies—A structure in the diencephalon involved in learning.
Managerial memory manipulations—Enhancing memory through organizing use of memory manipulations.
Medial temporal regions—Inner areas of the temporal lobes that are involved in memory consolidation.
Mediation deficits—When an individual cannot make use of memory strategies.
Medulla oblongata—Part of the brainstem, or hindbrain — the most primitive portion — this structure is located just above the spinal cord and controls the most basic of life functions, such as respiration, blood pressure, heartbeat, and muscle tone. It is often referred to simply as the medulla. The medulla is the transition point between brain and spinal cord, and it is at this juncture that the sensory nerve fibers cross over each other — hence, the reason for the left brain’s control over the right side of the body and vice versa.
Memorist—A person with superior memory skills without making use of traditional image-based mnemonics.
Memory aids—Objects or devices that facilitate memory performance.
Memory aids, commercial—A product that facilitates memory performance or does the memory task for a person.
Memory attitude manipulation—A behavior that corrects your misimpressions of memory performance and that fosters a realistic approach to memory tasks.
Memory blocks—When a person tries repeatedly to recall something but cannot do so.
Memory communication—Claims about memory performance that affect another’s acceptance of the claims.
Memory condition manipulation—A behavior that enhances a person’s memory performance by improving one’s physiological and mental states.
Memory contrivance—A portrayal of someone else’s memory performance as better or worse than it actually was in order to achieve certain social goals.
Memory disorder—A psychological and/or physiological condition that impairs memory performance and renders the person unable to function adequately in daily life.
Memory etiquette—Rules concerning how one should act when someone else fails at a memory task.
Memory feedback—Information about a person’s memory performance (see memory contrivance).
Memory improvement—A program of imparting better memory processes (see memory rehabilitation).
Memory language—Words that convey memory states.
Memory pacts—Agreements wherein one person agrees to perform certain memory tasks in exchange for the other person performing other memory tasks.
Memory questionnaires—Questionnaires that ask about memory performance.
Memory rehabilitation—A program of retraining memory functions that have been lost due to disease, disorder or accident (see memory improvement).
Memory reputation—The beliefs that others hold regarding the likelihood a person will succeed or fail at memory tasks.
Memory rituals—Memory tasks customarily expected of individuals in certain cultures.
Memory role expectations—Memory tasks customarily expected of individuals in certain relationships (e.g., knowledge that people of a certain occupation are expected to know).
Memory savvy—Knowledge about how to recognize memory problems, link them with appropriate manipulations, and adjust your performance to fit the memory tasks that arise.
Memory slips—The recalls of something other than what was intended. Sometimes referred to as ‘senior moments’.
Memory span—The number of items recalled in correct order from a list.
Memory stereotypes—Beliefs people hold about the memory performance of others in a particular group (gender, race, physical appearance, or occupation).
Memory strategies—The mental activities used to enhance learning and retrieval.
Memory tasks—There are four categories of memory tasks: knowledge, events, intentions, and actions.
Memory tasks imposed by others—Situations in which social norms dictate that a person must perform certain memory tasks.
Memory test battery—A collection of standardized memory tasks that is administered to measure an individual’s memory functioning.
Meningitis – inflammation of the three membranes that envelop the brain and spinal cord, collectively known as the meninges; the meninges include the dura, pia mater, and arachnoid.
Mental conditions that impair memory performance—Poor concentration, excessive emotions, anxiety, mood difficulties.
Mental status exam—An interview in which the examiner assesses the individual’s cognitive abilities.
Metabolism—all of the chemical processes that take place inside the body. In some metabolic reactions, complex molecules are broken down to release energy. In others, the cells use energy to make complex compounds out of simpler ones (like making proteins from amino acids).
Metamemory—Knowledge and beliefs about how to perform memory tasks and about a person’s awareness of one’s own memory processes, abilities and interests.
Metamemory questionnaires—Tests of self-knowledge of memory performance and memory strategy use (see memory questionnaires).
Method of loci—A mnemonic in which a person memorizes a set of familiar locations (such as the rooms in one’s house) and then mentally places each item on a list in the different rooms of the house.
Microtubule—an internal support structure for a neuron that guides nutrients and molecules from the body of the cell to the end of the axon.
Midbrain—This structure is the segue between hindbrain and forebrain; it houses a number of relay stations that transmit signals from the spinal nerves and hindbrain to the cerebral cortex. The midbrain also includes some of the centers from which sensory motor integration (i.e., eye movements) and reflexes are initiated. Among these are a pair of nuclei known as the superior colliculus, which control the eye’s reflex actions, as well as the inferior colliculus, another nuclei duo in control of auditory reflexes. While these more complex relay sites are located at the top of the midbrain, the more primitive reflexes in response to pain, temperature, movement, and touch are relayed from its base.
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI)—a condition in which a person has memory problems greater than those expected for his or her age, but not the personality or cognitive problems that characterize AD.
Misinformation effect—The effect of leading questions about a previous event on a person’s memory for the event.
Mnemonics—Knowledge about the ways of learning or remembering.
Mnemonist—Someone with a superior memory due to extensive knowledge and practice with mnemonics.
Mood-dependent memory—The hypothesis that memories may be retrieved best when a person’s mood at the time of retrieval is the same as when learning occurred (see encoding specificity and state-dependent memory).
Mood induction—Presenting stimuli that elicit a particular mood state.
Motivated forgetting—Forgetting due to conscious suppression or repression of a memory.
Motivation—The influence of incentives and drives on a person’s attempt to perform memory tasks.
Motor neuron—Responsible for transmitting the electrical pulses that initiate movement, the cell bodies of these neurons are located in the brain and spinal cord. Their axons extend outward into the body (in someone like Shaquille O’Neil these can be several feet long!), ending when the axon (nerve) terminal comes in contact with either individual muscle fibers to cause contraction or relaxation, or glands to stimulate secretions. Muscles and glands are also called effectors.
Multi-Infarct Dementia —dementia brought on by a series of strokes.
Multi-modal Theoretical Perspective—The hypothesis that memory is best improved by taking account of all psychological modes (such as perceptual, motivational, physiological, emotional, social).
Multiple personality disorder—When a person’s personality structure divides into two or more distinct identities (see psychogenic amnesia and psychogenic fugue).
Mutation—a permanent change in a cell’s DNA that can cause a disease.
Myelin—a whitish, fatty layer surrounding an axon that helps the axon rapidly transmit electrical messages from the cell body to the synapse.
N
Naive mnemonics—Mnemonic techniques that people naturally use without formal training or instruction.
Nerve growth factor (NGF)—a substance that occurs naturally in the body and enhances the growth and survival of cholinergic nervesthat maintains the health of nerve cells. NGF also promotes the growth of axons and dendrites, the parts of the nerve cell that are essential to its ability to communicate with other nerve cells.
Network models—Models of memory where ideas are linked together in a network of interconnections.
Neural cell death—when neurons literally die. This can happen through damage, over-excitation or disease, but also as a natural ‘programmed’ process including apoptosis. When this programmed cell death fails, it can sometimes lead to cancer.
Neural nets—Interconnected neurons hypothesized to mediate memories (see cell assemblies and macrocolumn).
Neural Stem Cells – cells found only in adult neural tissue that can develop into several different cell types in the central nervous system.
Neuroexcitation – the electrical activation of cells in the brain; neuroexcitation is part of the normal functioning of the brain or can also be the result of abnormal activity related to an injury.
Neurofibrillary tangles—Twisted nerve fibers and tangles of dead neurons called senile plaques that are believed to be involved in memory losses in Alzheimer’s disease.
Neuroplasticity—refers to the ability of the human brain to change as a result of one’s experience, that the brain is ‘plastic’ and ‘malleable’. The brain consists of nerve cells (or “neurons”) and glial cells which are interconnected, and learning may happen through change in the strength of the connections, by adding or removing connections, and by the formation of new cells. “Plasticity” relates to learning by adding or removing connections, or adding cells.
Neurogenesis—the creation of new neurons. It largely occurs in the developing brain although over the last decade or so we’ve realised that limited neurogenesis occurs in the adult brain.
Neuron—The smallest anatomical unit of the nervous system. A neuron consists of a cell body, dendrites and an axon, and is separated from other neurons by a space called a synapse.
Neuroexcitation – the electrical activation of cells in the brain; neuroexcitation is part of the normal functioning of the brain or can also be the result of abnormal activity related to an injury.
Neurotoxic—poisonous to nerves or nerve tissue.
Neurotransmitter—A substance that neurons release into synapses and that stimulates other neurons. Chemicals that transmit nerve signals from one neuron to another. Any of a wide variety of chemicals stored at the ends of axons in synaptic vesicles. When liberated by an electrical impulse (an “action potential”), these chemicals exit the axon terminal and flood into the synaptic cleft, traveling across it and lodging in receptors on the dendrites of connecting neurons. The reception of neurotransmitters by an adjacent neuron will initiate either an excitatory or inhibitory electrical effect. The remaining neurotransmitter is either broken down in the synaptic cleft, or taken back up by the original neuron to be recycled.
New approach to improving memory abilities—The improvement of memory ability by affecting memory directly or indirectly through other psychological functions (physical and mental condition, memory attitudes, perception and use of the physical environment, social interaction).
Next-in-line effect—The poor recall a person in a group has for what was said by others who spoke just before or after this person.
Non-Fluent Aphasia – a condition in which patients have trouble recalling words and speaking in complete sentences. Also called Broca’s or motor aphasia.
Nonverbal memory language—Gestures, facial expressions, and nonverbal sounds that a person remembers.
Norepinephrine—A neurotransmitter substance that can enhance subsequent memory performance (see neurotransmitter).
Nucleus basalis of Meynert —A small group of cholinergic nerve cells in the forebrain and connected to areas of the cerebral cortex.
Number-letter mnemonic—A mnemonic in which a person first memorizes number to letter pairs with the digits 0 to 9. Later the letters of words may be memorized by converting the letters into numbers. Also, numbers may be memorized (such as historical dates) by converting numbers in to letters.
O
Occipital lobe—This lobe is dedicated almost entirely to managing vision and its associated functions. It receives and processes all visual stimuli delivered by the optic nerves and via the thalamus, and relays the processed information back through the midbrain to the muscles of the eyes, as well as to the inferior temporal lobe, the association areas of the parietal lobe, and the frontal lobe. Primary among its duties (aside from vision itself) is the interpretation of upside-down images as mapped onto the retina by the eye’s lens, allowing us to perceive the world right side-up. A lesion in the visual cortex can produce a wide range of symptoms, from not being able to see in your peripheral field of view, to complete blindness.
Old approaches to improving memory abilities—Methods of memory improvement developed from 100 years ago to more than 2000 years ago, which are being repackaged and promoted to this day.
Olfactory cues—Smells that are present during learning.
Oligodendrocytes – a type of support cell in the brain that produces myelin, the fatty sheath that surrounds and insulates axons.
Organic memory disorders—Disorders with a physiological basis that may impair memory (such as a head injury, certain diseases, and toxic agents).
Organization—Grouping items together because of some shared characteristic.
Overlearning—Continuing to study material after complete recall has been demonstrated.
P
Paired Associate Learning—Learning pairs of items so that the second item may be recalled when the first is presented.
Parallel distributed processing (PDP)—When mental processes occur simultaneously.
Parietal lobe— This lobe is the control center for all the body’s somatosensory input, and gives us our sense of touch, our ability to understand form through touch, and our recognition of stimuli from our own bodies (pain, temperature, pressure, etc). It also aids in some speech and visual functions. The Homunculus: spinal nerve fibers run through the thalamus, which distributes them to specific sections of the parietal lobes. These connections come together to form a map of the body’s entire surface, called the homunculus. Visual representations of the homunculus are odd-looking, because far more area is given to some bodily surfaces than others. Largest are the connections for our lips, hands, ears, and genitalia. Wernicke’s area: part of the section of the parietal lobe adjacent to the temporal lobe is known as Wernicke’s area. This section of the cortex controls our understanding of the auditory and visual aspects of language. Patients with damage to Wernicke’s area are faced with the unusual symptom of failing to understand language while still being able to produce its component sounds.
Pattern recognition—The recognition of an arrangement of different kinds of stimuli.
Peg system—A mnemonic in which a person first memorizes a series of mental hooks on which to “hang” items to be learned. For example, a person first memorizes a series of number-object pairs, usually in a rhyme (“one is a bun, two is a shoe, three is a tree, etc.”), and then mentally places each item on a list to be learned on an object, resulting in rapid learning of the list.
Penetrating Head Injury – a brain injury in which an object pierces the skull and enters the brain tissue.
Persistent Vegetative State – an ongoing state of severely impaired consciousness, in which the patient is incapable of voluntary motion.
Person schema—An idea about a person that is built up through experience about a person (their traits and typical behaviors).
Phases of memory processes—Registration, retention, and remembering.
Photographic memory (eidetic imagery)—The ability to remember a perfect image of a visual stimulus after the stimulus has been removed from view.
Physical conditions that impair memory performance—Fatigue, lack of sleep, medicines, major and minor health problems, poor nutrition, sensory deficiencies, and use of adverse substances.
Pituitary gland—This endocrine structure might be called the “master” gland, because its own activity regulates the hormonal secretions of so many other glands throughout the body. This gland controls bone and muscle growth, the proper formation of reproductive structures, sexual maturation, and sexual and reproductive function. Its close collaboration with the hypothalamus means it also plays a key role in the regulation of basic bodily functions and biological drives.
Placement and Intentions—Placing objects in conspicuous locations facilitates the remembering of an intention.
Plasticity – ability of the brain to adapt to deficits and injury.
Pollyanna principle—Information and events are more likely to be free recalled if they are pleasant.
Pons—The pons sits directly above the medulla oblongata and beneath the midbrain. It serves mainly to connect the two hemispheres of the cerebellum through its network of large nerve fiber bundles, and can be identified as a bulge directly in front of the cerebellum on the brainstem. The pons contains nuclei that deliver messages about movement and location for many parts of the body, back and forth between the cerebral cortex and medulla oblongata, and plays a role in establishing regular sleep, breathing, and tasting functions.
Positron emission tomography (PET)—A picture of the brain by measuring the amount of glucose taken up by different groups of neurons may be obtained by injecting radioactively labeled glucose into the bloodstream and radiation detectors (see MRI and CAT scans).
Post-Traumatic Amnesia (Pta) – a state of acute confusion due to a traumatic brain injury, marked by difficulty with perception, thinking, remembering, and concentration; during this acute stage, patients often cannot form new memories: An amnesia from the onset of a coma to the recovery of continuous memory.
Post-Traumatic Dementia – a condition marked by mental deterioration and emotional apathy following trauma.
Post-Traumatic Epilepsy – recurrent seizures occurring more than 1 week after a traumatic brain injury.
Presenile dementia—Dementia’s that occur before the age of 65 years.
Primacy effect—The superior recall of the initial items in a list.
Primary memory—Consciousness (sometimes regarded as short-term memory).
Priming—The increase in trace strength due to familiarizing oneself with the material to be learned or retrieved.
Proactive interference (PI)—The effect of prior learning on the recall of something learned more recently.
Procedural memory—Memory for actions or sequences.
Prodigious savant—A person who performs cognitive tasks at an exceptional level, but who is mentally retarded.
Production deficits—When an individual fails to generate an appropriate memory strategy for a memory task.
Proprioceptive cues—Information about what body parts are doing when something is learned.
Proposition—A unit of knowledge that can be asserted as being either true or false.
Prosopagnosia—A disorder in which a person cannot recognize the faces of familiar people.
Prospective memory—Remembering to carry out intended acts (see retrospective memory).
Pruning – process whereby an injury destroys an important neural network in children, and another less useful neural network that would have eventually died takes over the responsibilities of the damaged network.
Pseudodementia—A severe form of depression resulting from a progressive brain disorder in which cognitive changes mimic those of dementia.
Psychogenic amnesia—An amnesia due to an extremely stressful event (see psychogenic fugue and multiple personality disorder).
Psychogenic fugue—An amnesia in which a person loses his or her identity because of an extremely stressful event (see psychogenic amnesia and multiple personality disorder).
Q
Qualitative aspects of memory—Speed of recall and effect expressed during recall.
Quantitative aspects of memory—How much information a person processes in a memory task.
R
Reality monitoring—Detecting whether a memory pertains to an event that actually occurred or that one imagined.
Realization—Incidental remembering.
Recall—Saying or writing what was presented or what occurred.
Recall congruency—The effect of mood on the recall of information during recall (see encoding congruency).
Recency effect—The superior recall of the final items on a list.
Recent memory—Memory for events that happened several hours or a few days previously.
Receptor site—The sites on the postsynaptic membrane that are affected by neurotransmitters.
Recognition—Indicating whether or not something was presented previously.
Reconstruction—Guessing what might have occurred or what might be true when one cannot recall this.
Refreshing—Reviving a memory by presenting some record of the event.
Reminding—Presenting a cue in order to lead a memory to be remembered.
Reminiscence—Repeated attempts at recalling autobiographical experiences, usually for pleasure.
Remote memory—Memory for events that happened a long time ago.
Repisodic memory—A memory that blends the memories of similar episodes.
Repertoire (of memory techniques)—A set of task-specific techniques tailored to particular memory tasks.
Repression—Inability to recall extremely unpleasant memories or experiences.
Resource-allocation hypothesis—Inability to recall due to attempting too many cognitive tasks.
Response bias—The tendency to recall information in a way that will be acceptable to others.
Reticular formation—This network of nerve fibers is bi-directional and runs along the spinal cord through the medulla oblongata, pons, and midbrain, carrying sensory impulses to the thalamus and cerebral cortex. When sensory stimuli are carried to the brain stem, they stimulate the reticular formation, which in turn stimulates the alertness of the cerebral cortex. It functions as a gatekeeper in that it determines which sensory messages to carry all the way to the cerebrum, and also helps control heartbeat, digestion, sleep, breathing, and overall awareness.
Retrieval—Intentional remembering.
Retrieval practice—Development of skill at retrieval through repeated attempts at a remembering task.
Retrieval structure of a trace—One of the four aspects of a trace that may be formed by a mental manipulation. A retrieval structure is developed by creating trace information that suggests the information in another trace.
Retroactive interference (RI)—Difficulty in remembering something learned in the past due to interference produced by recently learned information.
Retrograde amnesia—A loss of memory for events prior to a concussion or brain damage.
Retrograde facilitation—The facilitation of memory performance after electrical stimulation of the brain.
Retrospective memory—Recall of past events or information (see prospective memory).
Ribonucleic acid (RNA)—Chemical chains that some believe retain individual memories.
Right hemisphere—Many of this hemisphere’s functions are intricately entwined with those of the left, but the right hemisphere is more dominant in the areas of creativity, intuition, pattern perception, spatial understanding, rudimentary understanding of language and emotion.
S
Savant—A person of great learning or a certain mental skill.
Savings—A measure of what is retained from original learning.
Schema—A memory for a person, object, situation, or event that is built up through experience.
Scopolamine—A drug that appears to interfere with the use of memory.
Script—A type of schema that describes common, frequently occurring events.
Secondary dementia’s—Dementia’s due to illnesses that do not attack the brain.
Secondary memory—Information in long-term memory.
Seizures – abnormal activity of nerve cells in the brain causing strange sensations, emotions, and behavior, or sometimes convulsions, muscle spasms, and loss of consciousness.
Selective recall—The superior recall for information that is consistent with a person’s attitudes.
Self-observation of memory performance—Taking account of one’s memory performance in a variety of memory tasks such as by completing memory questionnaires or by keeping a memory diary.
Self-reference effect—Superior recall due to deciding how well the material applies to oneself.
Self-schema—A memory about oneself, one’s traits, and one’s behaviors.
Self-terminating serial search—An item by item search of memory until the correct item is found.
Semantic memory—Memory for knowledge.
Senile dementia—A dementia developed after the age of 65 years.
Sensory memory—The brief memory for something just seen, heard, smelled, or touched.
Sensory neuron—These neurons contain multiple dendrites to receive input, which is relayed to the cell body in the middle, and sends its output via an axon to the next recipient neuron. They are responsible for transmitting information from many kinds of sensory receptors in the body’s tissues (everything from feeling a cold breeze on your skin to the hair cells in your ears that detect sound) back to the nervous system for processing.
Sensory register—The component of the memory system responsible for sensory memories.
Serial learning—Learning a sequence of items in order.
Serial position curve—The probability of recall according to the order in which items were studied.
Serial search—The retrieval of items in memory in the order they were stored.
Shaken Baby Syndrome – a severe form of head injury that occurs when an infant or small child is shaken forcibly enough to cause the brain to bounce against the skull; the degree of brain damage depends on the extent and duration of the shaking. Minor symptoms include irritability, lethargy, tremors, or vomiting; major symptoms include seizures, coma, stupor, or death.
Shearing (Or Diffuse Axonal Injury) – damage to individual neurons resulting in disruption of neural networks and the breakdown of overall communication among neurons in the brain.
Short-term memory (STM)—The retention of small amounts of information for about 30 seconds or less.
Skilled memory theory—A theory that individual differences in memory performance derive from differences in practice at memory tasks.
Social context techniques—Social behaviors that eliminate social factors harmful to performance.
Social information—Information about the attitudes, roles, and means-for-impressing others that affect memory performance.
Social memory-factors—Social tasks that make demands on memory (such as cocktail parties or receiving lines).
Spacing effect—Superior recall due to separating study sessions.
Spread of activation—Excitement that moves along the links of a memory network.
Stages of memory techniques—A technique is elicited, modified to the particular task, applied to the task, and assessed for its effectiveness.
State dependent memory—The facilitation in recall when memories are retrieved in the same “state” that a person was in when the memory was formed.
Story mnemonic—A mnemonic in which a person creates a story out of the words on a list.
Strength mental techniques—Techniques that increase the strength of the traces being studied.
Strength of a trace—One of the four aspects of a trace that may be affected by a mental technique.
Stress—Mental or emotional disturbance that disposes people to be absentminded.
Study formulas—Key words that are intended to orient a person for studying.
Stupor – a state of impaired consciousness in which the patient is unresponsive but can be aroused briefly by a strong stimulus.
Subdural Hematoma – bleeding confined to the area between the dura and the arachnoid membranes.
Subdural Hygroma – a buildup of protein rich fluid in the area between the dura and the arachnoid membranes, usually caused by a tear in the arachnoid membrane.
Subjective organization—The organization of words into groups in memory on the basis of meaning common to the words.
Superimposition method—A test for eidetic imagery in which a person superimposes the image of one array of dots on another dot pattern.
Superstitious environmental techniques—Objects that some people believe will bring good luck to their memory performance.
Suppression—The forgetting of a memory by deliberately trying not to think about it.
Symbolic memory tasks—Tasks whose performance convey respect or affection and affects the relationship between people.
Symbolic reminders—Culturally established symbols that convey that a memory task is to be performed.
Synapse—The space between neurons in which neurotransmitters are secreted.
such as memory capacity,
Synaptic plasticity—Changes in the strength of connections between synapses, the chemical or electrical connection points between brain cells. Synaptic plasticity is an umbrella term in itself, and means nothing except something has changed at the synapse, but may include many specific processes such as long-term potentiation (LTP) or depression (LTD), changes in the number of receptors for specific neurotransmitters, and changes in which proteins are expressed inside the cell, among many others known and unknown. As a rule of thumb, nothing changes in the brain without changes in the synapses.
Synaptogenesis and synaptic pruning—the creation and removal of whole synapses or groups of synapses which build or destroy connection between neurons.
Synesthesia—Where sensation in one sensory modality (e.g., hearing) evokes a sensory experience in another modality (e.g., vision, touch, etc.).
T
Tagging—The theoretical assumption that memories are marked when they are encountered again.
Task situations—Categories of daily life in which memory tasks occur: home life, work, obligations, or recreation.
Task-specific techniques—A technique that is especially effective for a particular kind of memory task.
Task variables—The characteristics of a particular memory task or situation in which the task is performed.
Technical mnemonics—Mnemonics that people use after formal training or instruction (see naive mnemonics).
Temporal lobe—Located on the sides of the brain just above and behind each ear, the temporal lobes are primarily responsible for processing auditory information from the ears and relaying it to both Wernicke’s area on the parietal lobes and the motor projection area of the frontal lobes. The temporal lobe also houses some peripheral language and speech functions, and gives us our musical abilities.
Perhaps most importantly, the temporal lobes are home to two vital structures. First of these is the hippocampus, which guides short-term memory formation, as well as the retention of auditory and visual memories; the second is the amygdala, which communicates heavily with the hippocampus to initiate social behavior, primarily fear and anxiety responses, and manages sexual drives. It is believed that these two areas, combined with the temporal lobes’ other functions, come together to lend humans their sense of individual identity.
Test anxiety—Fear and nervousness that interferes with memory performance.
Test wise—An ability for taking tests.
Thalamus—This lower section of the forebrain acts as the primary integrator and relay center. It processes information coming from all the sensory pathways (except smell) before relaying it up to the cortex. It is also responsible for sending out motor signal responses to the proper cortical areas.
The thalamus is also a gatekeeper to the cortex; it determines which stimuli actually reach our consciousness, and which can be dismissed without cerebral input. The thalamus is centered directly at the base of the cerebral hemispheres, on either side of the 3rd ventricle, and receives connections from the spinal cord via the more primitive brain stem.
Theory of disuse—Forgetting due to people not making use of information in memory.
Thrombosis Or Thrombus – the formation of a blood clot at the site of an injury.
Time-gap experience—The feeling that little or no time has elapsed when actually a considerable lapse has occurred.
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon—When a person cannot recall a word but can recall some details about the word (like how many letters it has, what letter begins the word).
Top-down processing—Tasks that require active organization and elaborative processes.
Trace—A memory record of the details of an event or concept.
Transfer-appropriate processing—Superior recall which occurs when the kind of processing in recall is the same as was used when items were learned.
Transient global amnesia (TGA)—An amnesia that lasts only briefly (minutes, hours, or days).
Two-stage model of memory formation—A model of memory formation in which memories are first represented in short term memory and then in long term memory.
V
Vasopressin—A hormone that can enhance memory, especially in individuals who have low blood pressure.
Vasospasm – exaggerated, persistent contraction of the walls of a blood vessel.
Vegetative State – a condition in which patients are unconscious and unaware of their surroundings, but continue to have a sleep/wake cycle and can have periods of alertness.
Ventriculostomy – a surgical procedure that drains cerebrospinal fluid from the brain by creating an opening in one of the small cavities called ventricles.
Von Restorff effect—Superior recall of items that are perceptually and/or conceptually distinctive from other items studied.
W
Warm up—The increase in speed and proficiency at performing a memory task that results after initially attempting the task.
Wernicke’s area— a section at the upper end of the temporal lobe and a section of the parietal lobe adjacent to this area in temporal lobe in the left hemisphere is known as Wernicke’s area. This area controls our understanding of the auditory and visual aspects of language. Patients with damage to Wernicke’s area are faced with the unusual symptom of failing to understand language while still being able to produce its component sounds.
Weschler Memory Scale (WMS)—The oldest known memory battery which assesses memory for personal and current information, orientation, mental control, logical memory, digit span, visual reproductive memory, and associative learning.
Whole report procedure—Recall of an entire stimulus array.
Working memory—A component of the memory system that holds information for approximately one minute and where elaboration on the information produce long term memories.
Y
Yerkes-Dodson Law—The relationship between arousal and performance wherein performance increases from low to intermediate levels of arousal but decreases at high levels of arousal.
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