WE DISCUSS HOW MEMORY WORKS

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back everybody. Today we're talking about memory. We're looking
at memory how it flows through the sensory short term
and long term. We'll be looking at these three different
types of memories. Levels of processing theory which explains memory
retention based on depth of encoding, not storage location. Member.
There's usually three components encoding, storage, and retrieval. Encoding relies

(00:23):
on attention, elaboration and organization. Storage requires consolidation and reconsolidation.
We'll look at those later. Long term memory splits into
explicit which is episodic and semantic memory, and implicit procedural
priming and conditioning. Recall requires more cognitive effort than recognition.

(00:44):
Both are influenced by contexts of the internal state. For
you to know, you need to know state dependent recalls,
serial position effects, and memory distortions in trauma, aging, and
disassociative disorders. So, as we mentioned earlier, there is a
system for memory when it focuses on choreography of attension, structure,

(01:06):
and meaning. Every detail you remember today passed through multiple
layers of processing, and the ones that stick are the
ones that found something to connect to and remember again.
The E triple P doesn't just test your memory about things.
That's whether you understand how things operate. So let's look

(01:27):
at the multi store model of memory is proposed by
Atkinson and Schiffrin and breaks memory into three sequential systems.
The first one is sensory memory, which is fleeting and unfiltered.
The system briefly holds raw sensory data, such as what
they call iconic or visual or echoic, which is auditory
for a fraction of a second. Most of it fades

(01:49):
unless attention is directed toward it. And it makes sense right.
You can't overwhelm, can't process everything, have everything in your memory.
Short term memory is limited in both capacity see seven
items to plus or minus two in duration is about
fifteen to thirty seconds. If you hear a phone number,
so you ask somebody up, see you want to ask
somebody out, and you get their phone number and you

(02:12):
don't repeat it, or somebody interrupts you and you don't
access it again in the next fifteen to thirty seconds,
it will vanish, it'll disappear, and you'll get upset. Whoever
interrupted you. Rehearsal can keep it active longer. Working memory
and a type of short term memories proposed by Battle
and hitch includes the central executive, phonological loop, and visual

(02:36):
spatial sketch pad, and episodic buffers. Working memory handles temporary
manipulation of information, solving a math problem, planning a schedule,
or reading a sentence. We mentioned a few concepts that
you don't usually hear in the field of psychology in
regards to working memory, which was central executive, phonological loop,

(03:00):
spatial sketch pad, and episodic buffer. So we're going to
look at these and what these are, and maybe this
will help to remember them. Central executive is the control
system of working memory. It allocates at tension and switches
focus between tasks and coordinates the information. Coordinates the information
coming in from the subsystems. The subsystems include the three
we just mentioned, the phonological loopigal, spatial sketch pad, and

(03:22):
episodic buffer. It has a limited capacity and does not
store information itself. Think of it as a manager or
air traffic controller. It doesn't handle the content, but decides
what gets processed when and by which system. So when
you're driving while trying to remember directions and ignore noisy radio,
your central executive manages all those competing tasks. The phenological

(03:46):
loop processes verbal and auditory information. So it's made up
of the phonological store, the inner ear. It holds words
you hear for one to two seconds, articulatory rehearsal process
inner voice allows you to rep words in your head
to keep them in memory. Trying to remember a phone
number by siling it, repeating it over and over. This
is your phonological loop at work. Third is visual spatial

(04:12):
sketch pad. This handles visual and spatial information, often called
the inner eye, used for navigating environments, visualizing scenes, and
manipulating mental images. Mentally, arranging furniture in a room or
visualizing the route on a map uses your visual scapatial
sketch pad. Four then, finally is episodic buffer, a multimodal

(04:35):
store that integrates information from the phonological loop, visual spatial
sketch pad, and a long term memory into a coherent episode.
Helps create a unified experience, especially for conscious awareness and
a storylike memory. So we call it into details of
your last birthday, Where people said is the phonological component,
where they were sitting as the visual spatial and how
to all fit together in time as the episodic buffer.

(04:59):
So I wanted to make sure, but we expanded on
that and you understood what those terms were. Encoding is
the next step, which is how information gets in. Encoding
is the process of transforming the experience of the stimuli
into a format that can be stored. So attention is
number one. Without it, no encoding happens. Dividing our intention

(05:19):
leads to shallow processing and later retrieval failure. We talked
about this while back ago, where alcohol can impede encoding.
Elaboration ties new material to existing knowledge, saying this symptom
reminds me of my last client with PTSD builds stronger
memory than simply reading the word, so connecting it right.

(05:42):
Connecting new material to existing knowledge is another way to
strengthen the memory. Organization structures information meaningfully. In other words,
grouping symptoms into diagnostic clusters improves encoding and recall. The
levels of processing theory by Creak and Lockhart states that
memory isn't determined by where it's stored, about how deeply
it was processed. Shallow processing appearance or sound phase. Fast

(06:08):
deprocessing meaning connections builds durable memories. The next part is storage,
holding information over time. So once you've encoded the memory,
it goes into storage. This involves consolidation. The stabilization of
memory traces over time usually requires sleep in the hippocampus.
Activity disruption like trauma or intoxication, weakens long term retention.

(06:34):
Reconsolidation is every time a memory is retrieved, it becomes
temporarily malleable. This is the neurological basis for interventions like
emdr and imagery rescripting, which aim to alter emotional tone
during reactivation. See, when you access a memory, when you
retrieve it, it isn't like you have a photo in
your iPhone. You have to rebuild it every time. You're

(06:54):
recreated in a sense, so this recreation can change change
every time, and in fact it does change a little
bit every time you access that memory. And there have
been studies in the criminology world that if you access,
if a witness accesses the memory too many times, so
if they're getting interviewed by the police officer at the scene,
by the sergeants, by the detective later at the station,

(07:16):
the more access thing it does, the more that memory
can change. And also, oddly enough, if you don't access
over too long of a period of time, it can
change the memory. Your mood can affect the memory that
you're retrieving as well. Clinically, sleep deprived individuals may show
memory fragmentation due to failed consolidation. Likewise, trauma clients may

(07:38):
remember with vivid e motion but fragmented narrative reflecting impaired
hippocampal integration. Finally, is retrieval. Getting the information retrievable is
que driven recall, generating information without external cues describing a
client's trauma history. For instance, recognition is identifying in when

(08:00):
it's presented, identifying symptoms from a checklist. Oh, yes, this
person is lethargic. This person has no motivation. This is
a depression or possibly depression. Encoding specificity means retrieval improves
when context matches encoding same room, same mood, same mental state.

(08:21):
This explains why clients may forget details during intake but
remember them later during a session. When emotionally triggered state
dependent memory, you're more likely to recall memories formed in
a particular physiological or emotional state, like I mentioned earlier,
when you're back in the same state. For instance, Depressed clients,
for example, may only access negative autobiographical memories. Another one

(08:44):
is when your mood affects you. If I was to
ask you about your parents and you're in a bad mood,
you'll probably remember bad things or negative things that they've done.
If you're in a good mood, you'll remember positive serial
position effect. Items at the beginning and at the end
of a list are remembered, so items at the beginning
are also known as primacy and at the end recency.

(09:05):
This affects how much information clients retain from session discussions
or psychoeducation, so it's really important at the end of
the session to summarize and recap which you've taught them.
In addition, this is what marketing does a lot. They
get to message out in the beginning and at the end.
Long term memory systems splits into explicit and implicit. Explicit

(09:27):
is conscious implicit is unconscious systems. Explicit include declarative memory
like episodic memory memory for events and experiences. Your first
therapy session tied closely to the hippocampus and the medial
temporal lobes. Remember that's where the hippocampus is in there
deeply embedded semantic memory general world knowledge diagnostic criteria for instance,

(09:48):
for OCD that's stored in the neo cortex, especially again
in the temporal lobes. Damage to the hippocampus impairs episodic
but often spares semantic. This is important to understand. So
damage to the hippocampus and pairs episodic but often spares
semantic memory. A client may forget their appointment last week,

(10:11):
which is air episodic, but still understands the purpose of
the therapy. Implicit memory procedural memory, skills and habits, riding
a bike, driving housed in an abasial ganglia, and the
cerebellum priming exposure to a stimulus influence's future responses. A
client who repeatedly hears the word abandon may later interpret

(10:32):
neutral statements as rejection. Classical conditioning associated learning often tied
to amygdala, emotion, and cerebellum motor associations. These systems often
remain intact in amnesia or dementia, explaining why in Alzheimer's
patient can still play piano or respond emotionally to a
familiar song. So again, it's because the implicit memories are

(10:54):
still there. All right, We've moved on the parts the
clinical implications of memory phenomena. So here are some of
the ones. One is disassociated of amnesia, which involves retrieval failure,
often selective to trauma events, so neuroimaging may show hype
o activation and hippocampus and hyper activation and amygdala, indicating

(11:17):
strong emotional encoding but impaired narrative consolidation. A lot of
our really powerful emotional salient memories are usually stored in
the amigula. PTSD features enhance emotional memory and impaired contextual memory.
Flaxpacks flashbacks are often rich in sensory detail but disconnected
from time and place. This reflects overactivation of amigdala and

(11:40):
underactivation of hippocampus and prefunnel cortex. Alzheimer's disease progressive loss
of episodic and semantic memory, so explicit memory is damaged
beginning in medial temporal lobe structures. Procedural memory is preserved
longer and normal aging mild retrieval delays and episodic gaps,

(12:03):
but procedural and semantic memories typically remain intact. Encoding and
retrieval cues help compensate for this. So if you have
a seventy four year old who forgets new appointments, but
can discuss past travels in detail to suggests impaired episodic encoding,
but intact long term semantic recall likely just normal aging,

(12:24):
not dementia. So it really depends on the type of
memory they're remembering. So they forget their new appointment which
is episodic, but can discuss travels in details. That detailed
component takes you back to the semantic component of it.
So again, memory isn't just strut a storage member. It

(12:45):
is either a photo on your iPhone or your and android.
It's actually reconstructing a memory every time you recount it,
then the brain reshapes it. Every detail you recall for
the exam has been filtered, added and tagged in some
component some way with meaning. So remember that it isn't
how you it's not about what you studied or just
remote memory. It's about how deep you connected with the material.

(13:07):
So hopefully you're connecting with this or seeing these things
in your own clients, and maybe you can even practice
that while you're an Internet while you're interning. That's different. Now,
thanks everybody,