Sleep Promoting Improvement of Declarative Memory
Bahman Zohuri, Patrick J. McDaniel in Electrical Brain Stimulation for the Treatment of Neurological Disorders, 2019
This chapter summarizes a series of our own studies in humans; supporting a beneficial influence of slow-wave sleep on declarative memory formation and try to identify some mechanisms that might underlie this influence. Memories may serve as fond reminders of the past, but they also allow us to achieve learning goals and expand our educational horizons in the here-and-now. Implicit memory is a type of longterm memory that stands in contrast to explicit memory in that it doesn’t require conscious thought. Episodic memory is one type of explicit memory. Episodic memory is autobiographical: it provides us with a crucial record of our personal experiences. Procedural memory is the type of implicit memory that enables us to carry out commonly learned tasks without consciously thinking about them. The covert reactivation of neuronal populations used for encoding the respective materials during prior learning is thought to be a central mechanism for memory consolidation during sleep.
Art, culture, and prehistory
John L. Bradshaw in Human Evolution, 1997
This chapter explores the probable role of social or Machiavellian intelligence in primate evolution, and the place of possible positive as well as negative aspects in the evolution of social behaviors, social consciousness, and "theory of mind" aspects that may be singularly deficient in human autism. Social, as compared with technical, intelligence, may perhaps best be inferred from the observational studies of comparative ethology, but both aspects of intellect characterize Homo sapiens sapiens par excellence. Animals capable of mirror self-recognition have often been reared by humans and tend to score higher on other tests of social intelligence. Consciousness of the self-self-awareness occupies the next level above the awareness of events and objects in the surrounding world, and both levels can of course only be inferred. Conscious selective attention seems particularly to involve anterior cingulate cortex, supplementary motor area, and dorsolateral prefrontal and premotor cortex, regions that also mediate volitional action, working, and declarative memory, and general executive functions.
Prospective and declarative memory problems following moderate and severe traumatic brain injury
Published in Brain Injury, 2005
J. L. Mathias, K. M. Mansfield
Primary objective: To examine prospective and declarative memory problems following moderate and severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and the relationship between prospective memory (PM) and declarative memory and PM and other cognitive functions. Research design: The performance of persons who suffered a TBI (n = 25) was compared with that of a demographically matched control group (n = 25). Methods and procedures: Measures of time- and event-based PM, visual and verbal declarative memory, attention and executive functioning were administered to both groups. Main outcome and results: The group with a TBI performed more poorly on event- and time-based PM, verbal declarative memory, certain aspects of attention and executive functioning. The correlations between the measures of PM, declarative memory and the other cognitive tests were all non-significant. Conclusions: Problems with declarative memory, attention, and executive functioning do not adequately account for poorer PM performance following a TBI, suggesting that PM should also be assessed following TBI.
Visuospatial declarative learning despite profound verbal declarative amnesia in Korsakoff’s syndrome
Published in Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 2019
Erik Oudman, Albert Postma, Tanja C.W. Nijboer, Jan W. Wijnia, Stefan Van der Stigchel
Korsakoff's syndrome (KS) is a neuropsychiatric disorder characterised by severe amnesia. Although the presence of impairments in memory has long been acknowledged, there is a lack of knowledge about the precise characteristics of declarative memory capacities in order to implement memory rehabilitation. In this study, we investigated the extent to which patients diagnosed with KS have preserved declarative memory capacities in working memory, long-term memory encoding or long-term memory recall operations, and whether these capacities are most preserved for verbal or visuospatial content. The results of this study demonstrate that patients with KS have compromised declarative memory functioning on all memory indices. Performance was lowest for the encoding operation compared to the working memory and delayed recall operation. With respect to the content, visuospatial memory was relatively better preserved than verbal memory. All memory operations functioned suboptimally, although the most pronounced disturbance was found in verbal memory encoding. Based on the preserved declarative memory capacities in patients, visuospatial memory can form a more promising target for compensatory memory rehabilitation than verbal memory. It is therefore relevant to increase the number of spatial cues in memory rehabilitation for KS patients.
Convergent thinking and traumatic brain injury: an investigation of performance on the remote associate test
Published in Brain Injury, 2018
Arianna Rigon, Justin Reber, Nirav N. Patel, Melissa C. Duff
Objective: While deficits in several cognitive domains following moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) have been well documented, little is known about the impact of TBI on creativity. In the current study, our goal is to determine whether convergent problem solving, which contributes to creative thinking, is impaired following TBI. Methods: We administered a test of convergent problem solving, the Remote Associate Task (RAT), as well as a battery of neuropsychological tests, to 29 individuals with TBI and 20 healthy comparisons. Results: A mixed-effect regression analysis revealed that individuals with TBI were significantly less likely to produce a correct response, although on average they attempted to respond to the same number of items. Moreover, we found that the TBI (but not the comparison) group’s performance on the RAT was significantly and positively associated with verbal learning and memory, providing further evidence supporting the association between declarative memory and creative convergent thinking. Conclusion: In summary, our findings reveal that convergent thinking can be compromised by moderate-to-severe TBI, furthering our understanding of the higher-level cognitive sequelae of TBI.