H.M. and Facet of Memory
Introduction
Henry Molaison lost his memory on an operating table in a hospital in Hartford in August 1953, and he is mostly known as “H.M.” by many psychology students. For about ten years, the 27-year-old had suffered from an epileptic seizure and thus permitted William Beecher Scoville, a neurosurgeon in Hartford to remove a thumb-sized subdivision of tissue from each side of his brain. The surgeon properly removed out the seahorse-shaped brain structure known as the hippocampus. The operation was a success and importantly minimized Henry’s seizures but he was left with a permanent amnesia. Later on neuropsychologist Brenda examined him and the findings were that hippocampus was famous for creating memories, and the loss of both of them causes global amnesia. This paper will discuss the nature of consciousness, comparison and contrast between spared and the damaged abilities of ‘H.M.’ and examine the different facets of memory.
The nature of memory
Memory is the ways by which we remember our past life and then use the information in the future or present times (Sternberg, 1999). Memory nature is in three aspects that is memory encoding, memory storage and memory retrieval. The memory encodes information when it is first received, changes it to a form that the systems can store and cope with freely. Data is encoded according to visual aspect, sound and meaning. For example, remembering a phone number you saw on the mobile phone, that is using the visual coding but repeating it to yourself severally, that is the sound coding. Therefore sound encoding principle has been termed as short- term memory (STM) while the long term memory (LTM) encoding principle is the semiotic or understanding the meaning of the word.
Memory storage is concerned with the nature in which the memory stores information. For instance, where the data is stored, for what period it can stay there, the capacity of data the memory can saved, the type of data the mind can keep. How data is stored impacts the way we recover it when in need. There is a difference between STM and LTM, depending on how the information will be retrieved. According to Miller (1956), adults can keep between five and nine items in their STM, which he calls the magic number seven. He says that STM memory storage is seven plus or minus two and thus the name magic seven. But according to Miller, he did not specify the capacity of STM data that can be stored in one slot, but he says that the size of LTM that can be stored is unlimited. Short term memory can be for a few seconds, but long term memory can be stored in one’s entire life.
Memory retrieval refers to getting data from where it is stored, and failure to remember things means that the information cannot be retrieved. STM is stored and resourced sequentially while LTM is stored and resourced by association. Arranging data sequentially can make retrieval easy.
Comparison and contrast between spared and damaged abilities of H.M.
The spared abilities showed that the memory is a distinct cerebral function, separable from other cognitive skills. In contrast, the damaged skills showed that the brain parts works hand in hand with each other and if one part is removed then the others will not work effectively. For instance, when the hippocampus is removed from the brain, H.M. suffers memory loss (Gershman & Niv, 2017). The spared ability also showed that removing one part of the brain can solve problems a patient may have for H.M. recovered from a seizure while the damaged ability shows that it is dangerous to remove some part of the brain for it would lead to a more significant challenge in the future for he later could not store information.
Different facets of the memory
Declarative memory is memory that enables people to learn and recall facts and events they come across daily (Eichenbaum, 2001). The hippocampus with large network areas in the brain according to studies conducted, it can support declarative memory. When people have new data or experiences, they enter in the working memory. Neurons in the prefrontal cortex according to research, keep necessary data during working memory. The semiotic memory is a form of declarative understanding that entails data and facts. It seems that there are various cortical networks specialized for processing specific data such as actions, language and faces, and this is the work of the semiotic memory.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Molaison lost his memory on an operating table in a hospital in Hartford in August 1953, and he is mostly known as “H.M.” by many psychology students. Memory nature is in three aspects that is memory encoding, memory storage and memory retrieval. The different facets of memory are declarative memory, working memory and semiotic memory.
Reference
Eichenbaum, H. (2001). The hippocampus and declarative memory: cognitive mechanisms and neural codes. Behavioural brain research, 127(1-2), 199-207.
Gershman, S. J., Monfils, M. H., Norman, K. A., & Niv, Y. (2017). The computational nature of memory modification. Elife, 6, e23763.
Sternberg, R. J., & Sternberg, K. (2016). Cognitive psychology. Nelson Education.
Lundqvist, M., Herman, P., & Miller, E. K. (2018). Working memory: delay activity, yes! Persistent activity? Maybe not. Journal of Neuroscience, 38(32), 7013-7019.