Long and Short-Term Memory Processes in Cortically Damaged Patients.
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the contribution of the cerebral (non-limbic) cortex to specific verbal memory processes. Based on a literature review of psycholinguistic and memory processes in normals and central nervous system impaired patients, a tentative model of the brain regions subserving verbal memory processes was developed by the author. The model suggests that the left hemispheric cortex subserves both short term memory and lexical/conceptual storage, while the encoding or 'tagging' process that results in verbal information being transformed from a short term to long term state is dependent upon subcortical (limbic-thalamic) systems. To test the validity of this model, several hypotheses were developed. It was suggested that left cortically lesioned patients would have an inferior performance to controls and right cortically lesioned patients on recall, retrieval from long term storage, and long term storage measures on early trials of a Selective Reminding Test primarily due to a phonemic processing impairment. It was also suggested that only cortically lesioned patients (but not controls) would have poorer recall for low frequency relative to high frequency words. The results suggested that the left cortically lesioned group had a limited auditory-verbal memory deficit due to both linguistic (phonemic processing) and memorial (long term retrieval) factors. Their performance, however, was both qualitatively and quantitatively superior to Korsakoff patients who demonstrated severely impaired encoding and retrieval processes as a probable result of minimal contextual or episodic tagging of verbal stimuli.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1981
- Accession Number
- ADA107258
Entities
People
- Jordan Grafman
Organizations
- Air Force Institute of Technology