Environment, Cognition and Physiology

Question	Answer
What is amnesia?	Inability to learn new information or retrieve information which has already been stored as a memory
Who was Clive Wearing before his brain damage, why did this happen and when?	Professional pianist and conductor who suffered from viral encephalitis in 1985 which irrevocably damaged his hippocampus
What type of amnesia did Clive Wearing experience?	Anterograde - can't form new memories AND Retrograde - can't retrieve old memories
What are the results of Clive Wearing's amnesia?	Can only remember his second wife, not his first or his children. Greets her as if newly wed every time he sees her Can remember how to play piano and speak normally Keeps a diary but is full of repeated assertions that he has woken up for the first time
Why can Clive Wearing still play piano and remember his wife?	Speaking and playing piano are procedural memories which are stored in the cerebellum, which was undamaged. Emotional memories stored in the amygdala which was undamaged.
How long is Clive Wearing's short term memory?	About 7-30 seconds
Who is HM and what happened to him?	Man who experienced amnesia after undergoing surgery to remove his temporal lobes to reduce epileptic seizures (1953)
What was the result of removing HM's hippocampus?	Personality and intellect remained but memory was severely affected - could not form long term memories
What do these case studies show about the storage of memories (cognition)?	Episodic memories stored in the hippocampus whereas procedural memories are not
What was HM still able to do?	Learnt his way around the care home he lived in (after 6 years) and improved his skill at a mirror drawing task.
When was Reed & Squire study carried out?	1998
What was the aim of the Reed & Squire study?	To find out whether the area of the brain which was damaged in amnesiac patients was linked to the extent of retrograde amnesia
Who were the participants?	4 amnesiac patients - 3 male, 1 female - from the USA
Outline the study	Did MRI scans on the participants to assess the extent of the brain damage. Participants were made to complete a series of memory recall tests (words, faces and events) and then an autobiographical interview
What were the results of Reed and Squire?	All four of the participants had hippocampal damage, two of which also had temporal lobe damage. The two with temporal damage had much more severe retrograde amnesia
What was the conclusion and how does this support the case studies? (CW & HM)	Retrograde amnesia involves the temporal lobes Supports case studies as they both had temporal lobe damage and extensive retrograde amnesia
Give 5 evaluation points of this study	Very small sample with only 1 woman - could be a one off High ecological validity due to IV not manipulated Relevant but trivial tasks No control group MRI scan gives scientific evidence
What do these studies show about the link between cognition and physiology?	Damage to physiology - temporal lobes/hippocampus is linked to the loss of episodic memory and both retrograde and anterograde amnesia
What are 3 overall evaluation points of the Amnesia LO	Ethics - right to withdraw/informed consent compromised due to participants not being aware Very small samples = low generalisability Don't know if non-amnesiacs have the same link between cognition and physiology
What is neuroplasticity?	Localisation of function of the brain can adapt and change to suit environmental demands
Who conducted the study on the effects of meditation on the brain and when?	Brefczynski-Lewis et al. in 2007
What was the aim of the study?	to examine the differences in brain activity which may have occurred due to meditation
What was the hypothesis?	Meditation activates specific parts of the brain which are not active while resting. Those who are more experienced should show less activity here as it will take less effort to concentrate on the meditating.
Who were compared in the study?	Newly trained meditators and those who had between 10,000 and 54,000 hours of meditation practice 7/12 experienced meditators were Asian, compared to untrained Caucasian participants with an interest in learning to meditate
What did the researchers do to ensure that interest in learning was not a confounding variable?	Added a third group of participants who were given financial incentive to concentrate.
Outline the method	Pts brain scanned by fMRI scanners whilst concentrating on a dot on a screen while at rest. Simultaneously, researchers played various noises in attempt to distract them (woman crying, baby cooing and restaurant chatter)
What were the results?	Attention-related areas of the brain were more active during meditation than rest periods Novice meditators found it more difficult to concentrate - observed by greater brain activity Experienced meditators showed less activity in areas related to daydreaming and emotional processing
Who carried out the study supporting neuroplasticity in taxi drivers and when?	Maguire et al. in 2000
Who were the participants?	Fully licensed male taxi drivers with a range of experience Control group of existing scans of healthly males who did not drive taxis
Outline the study	pts had MRI scan and were compared to control group
What were the differences between brain scans?	Both left and right hippocampus were significantly greater in volume in the taxi driver's brains. There was a positive correlation between time spent as a taxi driver and volume of hippocampus which could not be accounted for by age
What was the conclusion?	There is a redistribution of grey matter in the hippocampus of taxi drivers due to intense development and use of spatial memory. There is likely to be a strengthening of neural connections
Overall, what do the meditation study and the taxi driver study show about the effects of environment on physiological processes?	Shows how the brain changes in response to the way we use it

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