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Elizabeth Loftus And The Misinformation Effect

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Elizabeth Loftus And The Misinformation Effect

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Growing up we used to visit my great-grandparents home in Florida, my grandparents were Irish and German and they had a small walking cane that hung up in the sunroom. My great-grandfather used to tell us this belonged to a leprechaun, and I could have sworn I remembered seeing a leprechaun using the cane around their land. After getting older I realized I was just a child with an overactive imagination and leprechauns do not actually exist. This is a great example of Elizabeth Loftus' study of misinformation and how misleading facts after an event can skew the memory.

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George Sperling and Research On Iconic Memory

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George Sperling and Research On Iconic Memory

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This next scenario takes place in my great-grandparent's kitchen. George Sperling's research on iconic memory involves experiments that demonstrated, that while the mind can perceive a large amount of visual information, this information decays rapidly. In my grandparents kitchen was a huge dining room table, nearby was a desk and a computer, a huge fridge and ample countertop space. On top of the table are a few items, a green apple, a bunch of bananas, some shredded wheat cereal, some pistachios and an old and worn football. My uncle toby is sitting at the table eating pancakes. As I am walking through the kitchen I notice and perceive these items but as I walk to the bathroom I can not remember how many bananas are on the table even though I saw them.

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George Miller's experiments in the 1960's proved that people have a short term memory of about 7 plus or minus 2 items. he introduced the concept of "chunking", meaning that people typically remember things better if they group them together rather than just having a string of information. In the next area of my 'palace' is my great-grandparent's garage, my grandfather had thousands of old relics, pieces of wood he had worked on, antiques and vintage cars and a comically large ashtray filled with cigarette butts and ash. As I remember, the sections of his garage had different items that were sorted together. In the section with the toilet, there was a deep freezer, a watermelon poster, an old slinky frog and a shower curtain hiding the toilet away from the public eye. To remember things in terms of 'chunking', I have created a scenario that will help me remember where things are supposed to go. When entering the garage, to my rights side is the toilet area behind the deep freezer. I remember, Frog, Watermelon poster, deep freezer, shower curtain, toilet, sink, window. That's seven items that help me visualize that area of his garage. To my left is his wood workshop, I remember the smell of wood, wood pile, woodworking tools, old projects he's done and an industrial saw. That's about five items that help me remember that area. Next is the center of the garage, up on the wall is a tv where he used to watch the news, I can see two lawn chairs, one for me, one for him, ashtray, beer can crusher, television, fridge, an old red sports car and grandpa. Visualizing the garage in terms of items by section help me to remember being in there with him all day long as a child.

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The self reference effect refers to the psychological idea that people can remember something better if they relate it with themselves. For the next topic, it takes place behind my grandpa's garage. He had cacti and a pond out back along with a ton of other vegetation. When I was younger I was playing back there and got cactus spines stuck in my hand. My grandfather took a magnifying glass and pulled the spines out with a pair of tweezers. Fast forward to modern times, I now know because of personal experience that cactus spines hurt. My in-laws have cacti now and they told me that they're spine-less but I still won't go anywhere near them because of the memory I have from my childhood.

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Frontal Lobes and Hippocampus: Explicit Memory

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Frontal Lobes and Hippocampus: Explicit Memory

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The Frontal lobe, including the hippocampus, in charge of the encoding, storage and retrieval of explicit memory. Explicit memory involves conscious recollection of memories. The hippocampus acts as a "loading dock" for new explicit memories, transferring them to the frontal lobes and other areas for longterm storage similar to a filing cabinet. The next area in my 'palace' is my grandparents bedroom, where they had lots of filing cabinets and a home computer, where I played lots of dress-up computer games. In these filing cabinets were lots of manilla folders containing papers I knew nothing about. I remember the sound of the filing cabinets opening and closing, as well as the smell of the papers stored in them. Toward the end of my grandfather's life he had cancer and so I explicitly remember him in bed eating chocolate ice-cream because his saliva glands were gone. He shared ice-cream and cookies with me as I played computer games beside him. I can remember the smells, tastes, sounds and feelings of this time period because of my brain's hippocampus.

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The Cerebellum and Basal Ganglia: Implicit Memory

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The Cerebellum and Basal Ganglia: Implicit Memory

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The Cerebellum and Basal Ganglia are parts of the brain relevant to the storing of implicit memory, also known as non-declarative memory. This would be things like riding a bike, or learning how to talk at a young age, or putting on a seatbelt to avoid being injured in a car accident. These are the memories that you don't have to actively recall. In my 'palace' the place for implicit memory is my grandpa's riding lawn mower. I don't own a riding mower today, and I haven't operated one since I was probably 8 years old, however, if I were to buy the same one my grandpa had tomorrow I would remember how to start it up and mow the lawn.

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The amygdala is the part in the brain that plays a role in retrieving memories that are associated with emotions. The next place in my 'palace' takes place in my great-grandparent's living room. When my grandpa was battling cancer, I was around 13 years old. My grandpa had become very frail and weak, he couldn't talk much due to his saliva glands being taken out. Right before my grandpa died we went to visit him and he spit chocolate ice cream out by accident while trying to talk. I was very young and did not understand the gravity of the situation and so I laughed. He died not long after this memory and for over ten years I have replayed this moment in my head wishing I could go back and take it back. I still get very emotional talking about it, which I now know is because of my amygdala.

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Long-Term Potentiation And the Neurotransmitter Glutamate

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Long-Term Potentiation And the Neurotransmitter Glutamate

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Long-term potentiation also known as (LTP) is a process that strengthens the synaptic connections between neurons with repetition and glutamate plays an important role in this process by activating specific neuron receptors. The role glutamate plays actually strengthens synapses between these neurons making it easier to access them later. Things like chronic stress or trauma have a negative affect on LTP, which can actually lead to memory loss and inability to learn. The last place in my 'palace' is my great grandparent's land, where my sister is buried beneath a cherry tree. LTP is said to be the way the brain changes based on an experience, so when we buried my sister this experience changed all of our brains and made us sensitive to life and death. Any time since my grandfather's death it seems like we have only traveled to Florida to bury family members. As this happens more and more frequently it just strengthens the connections between family, similar to LTP. After a certain amount of times the ions become depolarized and get used to that connection.