The Contribution of Neuroimaging to Understanding of Failures in Long Term Memory - Coursework Example

Cognitive Psychology Although it is an emerging branch of psychology, cognitive psychology has spread among psychological scholars at a somewhat unbelievable pace. The rate at which the study of human brain retention capacity towards certain factors is a source of intrigue, and it makes up the basic cognitive psychological behaviour. It is the study of basic brain reaction towards various things (Buckner, 2008). It studies how the brain learns, remembers, perceives and thinks. In technical terms, cognitive psychology is the study of how people acquire the knowledge they already have, and how they store and access it in their brain. The functions of this field of psychology are still emerging but the main ones now involve structuring education curricular to fit the ability of learners, improving human capacity to remember and it is also applicable in improving decision making capabilities of people. In order to understand how cognitive psychology came to be, an understanding of its evolution is necessary. In the period before 1950, the main psychological field relative to human behaviour and characteristics was behaviourism. In the period between 1950 and 1970, a lot of research began on cognitive psychology and human retention capacity. During this period the use of the term cognitive psychology first appeared. During this period, methods to conduct cognitive research emerged in the psychological field overshadowing behavioural psychology (Buckner, 2008). The distinction between behavioural psychology and cognitive psychology became clear during this period. The two major differences between behavioural and cognitive psychology are that behavioural psychology deals with observable behaviour while cognitive psychology concentrates on the deeper invisible functioning of the brain. The other difference is that behavioural psychology deals with visible perceptions as the mode of research and study while cognitive psychology focusses on scientific research methods purposely developed to determine mental activity. Cognitive psychology deals with the study of the basic brain functioning therefore it provides a wide scope for practise. Anyone with interest in human relations should have basic knowledge on human cognitive behaviour. Medical practitioners to police officers benefit from basic knowledge of cognitive psychology since it enables accurate assessment of other people. The basic fields within cognitive psychology are perception, learning, attention, decision-making and memory (Buckner, 2008). Psychologists studying the brain’s ability to perceive rely on experiments that help them understand how subjective is to different factors within the environment. Under this field, research done attempts to help scholars understand how different body senses combine to create a complete idea in the brain. The field combines smell, taste, audio and visual aids in understanding the brain’s reaction. Researchers studying attention as a cognitive element attempt to clarify how the brain becomes attentive to certain things while remaining passive to other things. The whole scope of what attention involves is visible in the following excerpts :’ Attention solves the problem of information overload in cognitive processing systems by selecting some information for further processing, or by managing resources applied to several sources of information simultaneously’ (Broadbent, 1957; Posner, 1980; Treisman, 1969). ‘Empirical investigation of attention has focused on how and why attention improves performance or how the lack of attention hinders performance’ (Posner, 1980; Weichselgartner & Sperling, 1987; Chun & Potter, 1995; Pashler, 1999). Another important field of cognitive psychology is the brains ability to learn new things. This enables one to settle into an environment and grasp what is necessary for survival. Learning is evident in animals who learn how to survive in the wild. The latter is the point where psychologists begin to study how learning occurs and they relate it to the learning that happens in the human brain. Understanding how learning occurs is important in designing an effective learning curriculum for students. This achievement depends on researches that pinpoint the easiest ways for the brain to grasp various concepts: ‘Those using computational approaches have investigated the nature of concepts that can be more easily learned, and the rules and algorithms for learning systems’ (Holland, Holyoak, Nisbett, & Thagard, 1986).  Decision-making intrigues psychological researchers who attempt to explain how the human brain influences decisions. Decision-making is usually voluntary and it has a basis of multiple criteria of making a judgement. Trying to understand how the brain influences decisions can lead to breakthroughs in influencing people to make certain decisions. Reasoning influences how people make decisions, which in turn shows the ability of a person to make proper judgement. The relationship of these three factors is under research by cognitive psychologists. The most important of these cognition elements is the study of how human memory works. Under this field, psychologists study how human beings acquire memories, how the brain stores the memories and how it accesses the memories. Under different classifications of memory, locations in the brain are the sub-conscious and the conscious. Memory storage occurs either in long term or in short-term basis. ‘The experimental approaches have identified dissociable memory types (e.g., procedural and episodic; Squire & Zola, 1996) or capacity limited processing systems such as short-term or working memory’ (Cowan, 1995; Dosher, 1999). In order to gather information on how the processes discussed above occur, psychologists have to know how the brain relays signals between different parts of the head and body. The signals are electrical and with they produce energy albeit in very low quantities. Psychologists studying cognitive behaviour to brain functions attempt to relate these signals to the cognitive behaviour under study. They use brain imaging techniques or neuroimaging techniques. The definition of this technique is that it involves production brain functions without use of invasive techniques such as operations. These techniques include computerized tomography, functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography (Buckner, 2008). A computerized tomography abbreviated as ‘CT’ relies on x-rays to project a detailed picture on how the body looks. It is important in various disease diagnosis and pinpointing foreign bodies within the body. Although they are quick and effective CT’s, fail to capture brain wave functions in real time and only capture a picture of how the brain looks at a particular moment. Functional magnetic resonance imaging abbreviated as fMRI uses electromagnets to excite hydrogen molecules in the brain, which causes motion. The motion of the hydrogen molecules produce an outline of the brain, since they are in motion, projection of a clear image requires maximum motion of the molecules. This method is effective in diagnosing brain diseases, but it does not provide a real time projection of the brain. Positron emission tomography (PET) involves use of radioactive molecules to determine brain function. The process involves injecting of radioactive molecules into the blood stream whereby they move to the brain. These molecules known as tracers project the basic functionality of the brain in real time. Since they are in the bloodstream, they intercept all the activities of the brain and one is able to visualize brain activity in correspondence to the body activity. This method is preferable during cognitive psychology research for real time neuroimaging purposes. Long-term memory and working memory In this study, the main aim is to understand how neuroimaging assists researchers and doctors understand long-term memory failure. Since memory is one of the cognitive elements, it is possible for doctors to realize what causes long-term memory failure and what prevention measure to use. In order to understand long-term memory loss a deeper understanding of the existent types of memory is important. It is also important to know what parts of the brain are active when it comes to different types of memories. Under this category, it is important to note how the brain stores different memories and how it accesses them. Memory has to broad classifications, which include working memory and long-term memory. Working memory is in constant use but only for a brief span of time. It is the memory that the brain has random access to in order to carry out other cognitive tasks. It is more flexible than long-term memory in that it allows the brain to coerce it into carrying out random operations at the necessary speed. This memory operates through manipulation since it taps on already available information from the long-term memory to carry out tasks (Ally, 2009). The long-term memory on the other hand describes memory stored within the brain for a long period. At times, it provides the working memory with the basics of going about solving a problem. Long-term memory includes all the languages one knows, sensory information acquired from the sensory organs and any other experience pleasant or otherwise is in the long-term memory. Long-term memory contains events that one can retrieve at will or those that guide ones behaviour without the person realizing. The latter shows that long term memory can have more subdivisions. Squire’s subdivision places long-term memory under declarative and procedural. Declarative memory is that long-term memory that an individual can retrieve at will. These memories may include childhood experiences or experiences that are more recent. Procedural memory is accessible by an individual, but they have no power on when to access it since it happens unconsciously. This type of long-term memory dictates the behaviour of an individual, and he/she has no control over the behaviour. An example of such a behaviour is ducking if someone else throws a stone at you. One does this unconsciously because the brain dictates the behaviour (Ally, 2009). Declarative memory has further classifications into episodic memory and semantic memory. When a person remembers a certain place or thing in relation to something that happened there, this is episodic memory. An example of the latter is remembering where a person bought their bicycle. Semantic memory involves retrieving memories but one cannot remember how they acquired them. An example of this is remembering which ice cream is sweeter yet one has no recollection on where that knowledge originated (Buckner, 2008). In creating of new memories, the brain follows predefined processes. These processes are encoding, storage and retrieval. These three processes are cognitive because they occur within the brain. When entering information into storage, the brain puts it in a proper internal code. The latter defines the first process in storage of information. The conversion of information in this stage is dependent on the type of information. An example is spatial information about a visual stimulus is selectively routed to a dorsal stream of information processing that mainly includes the parietal lobes, whereas information about shape and other nonspatial object-features of the same stimulus is processed by a ventral stream in the occipital and inferior temporal lobes (Holland, Holyoak, Nisbett, & Thagard, 1986).  After encoding the information, he brain retains the information in order to distinguish whether it is working memory or long-term memory. The durations retrieval of this information occurs determines the type. If after retention the retrieval duration is below a minute it means it is working memory, but retrieval of information constantly for a longer duration enables the brain to store it in the long-term memory. After determining the correct method of storage, the brain gets ready to retrieve information from the various types of storage Long-term memory loss Although approved clinical study of brain disorders started in 1950s, the first reported case of episodic memory loss due to dementia was in 1881. Further documentations followed shortly after from psychological scholars around the world. After a while, more psychiatrists started documenting cases of memory loss and the cause of the memory loss. Due to the varying reasons that caused amnesia, psychiatrists ruled it as a symptom for an underlying condition. After this declaration, psychologists intensified their study of the brain and they used monkey brains to try to understand human brain (Scoville, 1954). The psychologist that reported a first case of death after softening of the temporal lobe introduced the world to knowledge on how the brain affected memory. After the latter another psychologists had a breakthrough on the same, in 1954, Connecticut neurosurgeon William Scoville reported the profound memory loss that occurred in two patients on whom he had performed the same surgical procedure, in one to treat psychosis and in the other to treat a refractory seizure disorder (Scoville, 1954). According to further studies by Milner and Scoville in 1957 on ten patients who undergone surgery, it was evident that tampering with certain parts of the brain caused memory loss. The study produced further evidence showing that not all memory loss was due to brain interference (Scoville, 1954). Causes of memory loss Memory loss is at times due to a minor accident or due to a mental disorder. In order to understand long-term memory loss, elimination of other factors that cause memory loss is important. A concussion can cause memory loss to a person. This is a mild impact to the brain due to greater impact to the head. The kind of memory loss associated with concussions is not permanent and after a while memories start flooding back. Symptoms include confusion by the victims and anxiety. Another cause of memory loss is a stroke. This occurs when a blood vessel is not supplying enough oxygen to the brain therefore depriving part of the brain oxygen. Due to lack of oxygen for metabolism activities, the brain cells begin to die hence causing damage to the brain. Memory loss occurs if the affected parts of the brain store long-term memories (Ally, 2009). Another cause of memory loss is hypoglaecemia or low blood sugar. This is usually more serious in people with diabetes. It involves failure of the body to convert food into glucose therefore causing a glucose deficit in the body. It is dangerous especially if the victim stays under an attack for a long time they can become brain dead. This is because the brain requires glucose to carry out its cognitive functions. Failure of the brain to receive adequate glucose can lead to memory loss (Ally, 2009). Brain tumors also can cause memory loss. They come about when there is an abnormal growth of cells in the brain. When it occurs, its symptoms appear as migraines and memory loss to the victim. This is because the abnormal growth of these cancer cells blocks brain signals and at times, this interrupts retrieval and storage of information. If not removed, tumors cause permanent amnesia and death. There are many more causes of temporary and permanent memory loss but all of them have a direct relationship to the brain. Neuroimaging comes in handy when diagnosing the source of the memory loss. Before cognitive psychology became famous, it was hard to diagnose the causes of both temporary and permanent amnesia. If a psychologist needed to know how a patient’s brain was functioning, a surgery was the only solution. Evolution of neuroimaging techniques advances with the technological advancement. This enables doctors to have a better understanding on how the brain functions. The major cause of long-term memory loss is dementia, which has no cure. The numerous neuroimaging techniques give a better view of the disease’s progression in the brain. Due to this knowledge in a few years, there could be a cure for the disorder. Coupled with the technology available, neuroimaging is the key to understanding cognitive psychology. The latter will create a deeper grasp on brain cognitive functions (Ally, 2009). References Aggleton JP, Brown MW. 1999. Episodic memory, amnesia, and the hippocampal-anterior thalamic axis Behav Brain Sci 22425–444.444discussion 444-89. [PubMed] Ally BA, Gold CA, Budson AE. An evaluation of recollection and familiarity in Alzheimers disease and mild cognitive impairment using receiver-operating characteristics. Brain Cogn.2009a; 69:504–513. [PMC free article] [PubMed] Ally BA, Gold CA, Budson AE. 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