PSY30400 Chapter Notes - Chapter 7: Memory Consolidation, Neural Coding
Chapter 7: Long Term-Memory – Encoding, Retrieval, and Consolidation
• While every experience creates the potential for a new memory, new memories are
fragile and can therefore be disrupted
o Experiment in which nonsense syllables were presented to subjects →
immediate vs. delay groups
▪ In the immediate, subjects learned one list and then immediately a
second list while in delay, learned first list and then waited 6 minutes
▪ When recall for first list was measured, subjects in delay group
remembered 48% of syllables but subjects in immediate group only
remembered 28%
• immediately presenting a second list to the no delay group
interrupted the forming of a stable memory of first group
▪ Proposed the idea of consolidation
• the process that transforms new memories from a fragile state, in
which they can be disrupted, to a more permanent state, in which
they are resistant to disruption
• Synaptic Consolidation: involves structural changes at synapses
o takes place over minutes or hours
o According to Hebb, learning and memory are represented in the brain by
physiological changes that take place at the synapse
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