Critically evaluate the role of the MTL in LTM

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Critically evaluate the role of the MTL in LTM

Similarities

  • Gooding et al (2000)- meta analysis of MTL patient studies (k=36). Amnesics impaired in novel information (influence of EM)- MTL essential for associations between items and events
  • Wang et al (2010)- Perirhinal cortex critical for conceptual implicit memory. 9 MTL vs hypoxic patients. MTL patients poorer on conceptual implicit memory tasks- PRC area of maximal overlap
  • Moody et al (2004)- Patients with PD showed less activation in cuadate nucleus and greater activation in PFC regions. Also showed activation in MTL during a weather prediction task. MTL important in the interaction of EM processes (PFC) and IM processes (cuadate nucleus)
  • Bertossi (2016)- MTL essential for encoding and storage of LTM
  • Schendan (2013)- FMRI during SRT (some primed). Activation of frontal, parietal, cingulate and straital regions. Role of hippocampus in forming higher order activations for both IM and EM tasks
  • Olson et al (2006)- MTL amnesia patients. Remember 3 objects, locations or object-location conjunctions over 1s or 8s delay. Hippocampus critical for accurate conjunctions at both short term and long term delays- binder
  • Binding of Item and Context model (Dianna, 2007)- perirhinal (what), parahippocampal (where) and hippocampus (binds)
  • Scoville and Milner (1957)- HM had MTL damage. STM intact, LTM severely impaired- must be important for long term encoding and retreival- especially declarative memory (Graham et al, 2010)
  • Aggleton and Brown (1999)- two independent anatomical networks supporting memory.             1. The hippocampal-diencephalic system which is critical or the encoding and recall of episodic information                                                                    2. Non-hippocampal regions inc. entorhinal and perirhinal cortices- familiarity judgements

Differences

  • Verfaellie et al (2012)- Wang et al (2010)'s patients all had differing levels of brain damage- temporal lobectomy or cerebral artery infarcts- therefore not comparable. Study with 9 MTL patients (specific damage to the hippocampus) and 18 controls. No differences in conceptual memory
  • Squire and Zola-Morgan (1991)- the MTL is only important for encoding. IT is needed to bind together information which is then distributed to storage sites in the neocortex. Therefore the role of the MTL is transient and temporary- memory stored in the neocortex gradually becomes independent of the MTL structures
  • Jeneson and Squire (2012)- MTL lesions impaire performance only when working and immediate memory are not strong enough to compensate for the damage and sufficiently support performance. Subspan memoranda are supported by immediate memory and are independent of the MTL- individual differences are an important factor which need to be considered
  • Hard to tell because evidence comes from lesion studies and cases of amnesia- small samples, generalisability etc.

Overall comparison

Overall, the MTL is critical for the formation, retention and retrieval of long term memories 

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