SMPT 2: Memory Encoding

What is memory?

A psychological process of acquiring, storing, retaining and retrieving data. This data is an aggregate byproduct of our perception of reality

3 primary types of memory

Sensory

Short Term

Long Term

Sensory memory

This type of memory is the earliest stage, and typically lasts only up to a half second for visual, and four seconds for auditory

Iconic memory – visual in nature and stores for less than a second

Echoic memory - auditory, and can last for four seconds

Haptic memory – tactile, and can last for two seconds

Sensory memory passes a baton too short term memory

Short term memory

Also referred to as active or working memory

• Lasts 20 to 30 seconds

• Refers to only what we are consciously thinking at the moment

• This memory type may be increased, using certain types of strategy like Chunking

“squirrel moment”

Long term memory

Stored for future accessibility and retrieval

Memory is passed on from short term memory and the information is regarded as outside of our awareness, unless it is accessed and moved to working memory/ short term memory

Long-term memory lasts a lifetime that you may not be able to easily access all the information stored

• on a hard drive

Category subtypes: explicit and implicit

Explicit memory

Working: what you’re playing around with in your mind in the moment

Episodic: remembering events in your life, most tied to emotions and feelings

Semantic: store knowledge like academic information

Perspective: knowledge of upcoming events or appointments

• Working and semantic typically go together

• Episodic and perspective typically go together

Implicit memory

Priming: a person reacts in a specific way due to a previously exposed, stimulus or experience

Procedural: habits and skills, can be movement based “muscle memory“

Associative: the ability to remember the link between seemingly unrelated items

Nonassociative: can be habituation or sensitization oriented, stimulus is not paired to behavior (feels unrelated)

Memory, hierarchy, diagram

What is memory encoding?

The process takes raw data and transfers it into a usable format for processing and future retrieval

This process begins with sensory input and is changed and formed to be stored in the brain

Memory encoding: visual

Converting a visual image to understand it

Memory encoding: acoustic

Processing of sounds, words and other auditory input for storage and retrieval

Memory encoding: semantic

Sensory input that has a particular meaning of context.

This may include remembering concepts, ideas, definitions, and dates.

Memory encoding: elaborative

Simply means relating new information to prior knowledge. Memory is a combination of old and new information about some thing.

Memory encoding: tactile

Encoding and processing of feeling or touching something. Neurons in the somatosensory cortex.

Memory encoding: organizational

Classifying information to a sequence of terms. It includes categorization, listing, and grouping of information by noticing relationships among different items.

memory encoding is…?

The first step in the process of memory creation. It is a biological phenomenon that begins with perception and cannot be separated from the sensory experience.

• Your hippocampus integrates these perceptions & the frontal cortex analyzes the experience for importance

• Data is stored as electrical and chemical signals

What is a synapse?

Where a nerve cell connects to other cells

• Electrical pulses, carrying messages transfer between cells

• The electrical pulses across the synapse triggers, the release of neurotransmitters

• The Neuro transmitters, then flood the space in between and dock with neighboring cells (receptors)

A typical brain can have about 100 trillion synapses

Where does memory encoding take place in the brain?

• prefrontal lobe

• Temporal lobe

• Parietal lobe

• Anterior hippocampus

• Thalamus

• Basal ganglia

During encoding: left frontal regions of brain

During retrieval: right superior regions of brain

Encoding: acoustic vs. semantic

Encoding can be acoustic (based on auditory stimuli to implant) - short term

Encoding can be semantic (based on meaning and context to implant) - long-term

Frontal lobes

The “executive” functions

They help control

• thinking / abstract thought

• Mood

• planning

• organizing

• problem-solving

• thinking initiation

• reasoning (social judgment)

• behavior (emotions)

• speaking/ speech production

• short term memory

• movement

Parietal lobes

Interprets sensory information like taste, texture, and temperature

• Knowing right from left

• Sensation

• Reading

• Body orientation, and sensory discrimination

Occipital lobes

Process, visual images from your eyes and connect them to stored images for recognition

• Vision

• Visual reception and visual interpretation

• Visual awareness and visual processing

Temporal lobes

Help process sensory information like smell, taste, and sound as well as assist in memory storage

• Hearing

• Understanding Language

• Behavior

• Learning

• Memory storage and consolidation

• Verbal memory

• Visual and auditory memory

Inner Brain consists of:

thalamus

Hypothalamus

Hippocampus

Thalamus

A gate keeper for messages passed between the spinal cord and the cerebrum

Hypothalamus

Controls emotions and regulates temperature and other survival based functions like eating and sleeping

Hippocampus

Sends memories to cerebrum to be stored as well as retrieves these memories later

Fire together wire together

Fire apart wire apart

The brain contains billions of nerve cells, meticulously, arranged to coordinate thought emotion behavior, movement and sensation. Each part plays an important role in the overall process of memory encoding.

These synapses create new circuits between nerve cells re-patterning the brain

Emotional tagging hypothesis

States that the activation of the hippocampus by experience sets the local synaptic tag that is reinforced by emotional arousal. The end results in a long-term synaptic modification affecting long-term memory.

This integrative view, makes the assumption that emotional conditions induced long-term neural plasticity in the amygdala, and that the interactivity between the amygdala, and the hippocampus are not static, as previously thought, but dynamic.

This means the individual history of the person will affect how memory is processed in the hippocampus.

Memory consolidation

Emotionally aroused memory can be consolidated after one experience

A process by which memories become more secure and less susceptible to break down over period of time.

In this process, circuits can get rearranged. Emotionally triggered. Memories consolidate in a different way. This can make them feel more overpowering.

Psychological salience

A primitive feature of the human mental state in which the perceptive response focuses on some thing that feels important

Arousal / Valence

Intensity of the level of autonomic activation that an event creates and ranges from calm (or low) to excited (or high)

Valence / Arousal

The level of pleasant mess, then event generates and is defined along a continuum from negative to positive

Traumatic memory

These types of memories are formed after experiences that cause high levels of emotional arousal and the activation of stress hormones. These memories can be stimulated through “involuntary recall, ‘nowness’, vividness, and immutability.“

These memories are stored in the emotional centers of the brain (amygdala and hippocampus) and these parts of the brain activate the body when reminded of something similar to or tangentially related to the event

Conscious mind

• rationalization

• Will power

• Short term memory

• Planning

• Critical thinking

• Decisions, judgment

Subconscious mind

• Long-term memory

• Emotions

• Creativity

• Habits

Unconscious mind

• automatic control of pulse

• Control of respirations and immune system

The role of the soma in memory encoding: triggering in body from traumatic memory

The body can trigger traumatic memory and be triggered by traumatic memory.

The body can house information that exists below the conscious level. This is often a form of protective mechanism. This type of memory can be disassociated and catch them off guard.

Memories that are state or position dependent, can be retrieved when the person is in a particular state or position

Tensional memory

Created in a particular connective tissue architecture formed by oriented collagen fibers this architecture changes accordingly to modification of habitual lines of tension, providing a possible medium term memory of the force is imposed on the organism