MEMORY AND THE BRAIN
Psychologists’ study of memory has focused, appropriately, on what people do, say, feel and imagine as a result of their past experiences. But how are these activities of remembering reflected in our brainThe study of amnesia has been important in recent years, not only as a way of discriminating between certain types of memory processes, but also in linking deficits in remembering with localized brain damage in patients who have sustained injury. In addition, the development of techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has added significant new information by allowing us to study the parts of the brain that are active when ordinary people remember. For an excellent review of this research, see Parkin (1997). Making generalizations about memory and the brain is difficult because remembering is a complex process, involving most other cognitive and emotional aspects of a person. So many parts of the brain will be active when someone is remembering. We cannot just remember something without also feeling and thinking, so it is very hard to isolate any neural activity that might be unique to remembering. But certain parts of the brain do seem to be important to memory in particular. For example, damage to the hippocampus and the thalamus can prevent new episodic memories being formed (Squire, 1992). Patients with hippocampal damage can learn new skills without forming episodic memories. So the patient who had had his hippocampus surgically removed, was eventually able to solve a complicated puzzle that he attempted over many days. Yet each time he was given the puzzle, he denied having ever seen it before (Cohen & Corkin, 1981). This tells us that the hippocampus appears to play an important part in the formation of episodic memories.
Psychologists’ study of memory has focused, appropriately, on what people do, say, feel and imagine as a result of their past experiences. But how are these activities of remembering reflected in our brainThe study of amnesia has been important in recent years, not only as a way of discriminating between certain types of memory processes, but also in linking deficits in remembering with localized brain damage in patients who have sustained injury. In addition, the development of techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has added significant new information by allowing us to study the parts of the brain that are active when ordinary people remember. For an excellent review of this research, see Parkin (1997). Making generalizations about memory and the brain is difficult because remembering is a complex process, involving most other cognitive and emotional aspects of a person. So many parts of the brain will be active when someone is remembering. We cannot just remember something without also feeling and thinking, so it is very hard to isolate any neural activity that might be unique to remembering. But certain parts of the brain do seem to be important to memory in particular. For example, damage to the hippocampus and the thalamus can prevent new episodic memories being formed (Squire, 1992). Patients with hippocampal damage can learn new skills without forming episodic memories. So the patient who had had his hippocampus surgically removed, was eventually able to solve a complicated puzzle that he attempted over many days. Yet each time he was given the puzzle, he denied having ever seen it before (Cohen & Corkin, 1981). This tells us that the hippocampus appears to play an important part in the formation of episodic memories.
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