Lecture on Memory and Mental Health

Overview

Presenter: Dr. Dorothy Buckley
Topic: Memory disruptions in psychological disorders
Focus: How memory is disrupted in psychological disorders, case studies, treatment options

Lumberjack (1980)
- Found in Toronto without identity.
- Suffered from dense, complete psychogenic amnesia encompassing fugue state.
- Memory triggered back by TV images of a funeral.
- Regained complete autobiographical memory.
J.H. (2005)
- Experienced retrograde and anterograde amnesia without losing personal identity.
- After six years of therapy, regained memory.
Patient C (2018)
- Auto accident, minor injuries, developed psychogenic amnesia.
- Exhibited la belle indifférence (indifference to condition).

Psychogenic Amnesia: Amnesia caused by psychiatric disorders or psychological trauma, not brain injuries.
Common Precursors (Arrigo and Pesdak, 1997):
- Disasters, combat, suicide attempts, criminal acts, sexual assault.
Types: Dissociative Amnesia and Dissociative Fugue
- Dissociative Amnesia: Only the traumatic event or related events are forgotten.
- Dissociative Fugue: Loss of personal identity, name, place of birth, etc. Fugue state can last from days to years.

Severe stress, depression, and previous neurological trauma are commonly linked precursors.
Treatment: Address depression first, then family impact, trying to restore memory with interviews and cues if memory doesn't come back naturally.

PTSD: Caused by exposure to extremely disturbing experiences.
Key feature: Inability to inhibit retrieval of traumatic memories, cued by harmless events.
Intrusive Memories: Vivid, unwanted recollections of trauma.
Symptoms: Nightmares, avoidance behavior, anxiety, depression.
Individual Differences: Those with vivid visual memory are more prone to PTSD.

Chow 2017: Found memory and metamemory deficits in military veterans with PTSD.
Strategies to reduce intrusive memories: Drug treatment, sleep deprivation, cognitive interference such as playing Tetris or cognitive tasks post-trauma.
Interference Study (2019): Patients who played Tetris showed reduced intrusive memories but equivalent anxiety and depression symptoms.
Deficits in everyday memory: Suggested by various studies e.g., Sachet et al. (2018).

Schizophrenia: Chronic and severe psychiatric disorder affecting thought processes.
Memory Deficits: Working memory and episodic memory are predominantly affected.
Working Memory: Central executive functioning issues, attention allocation.
Episodic Memory: Encoding issues, compared to healthy controls.

Van Snelberg et al. (2016): Found deficits in working memory performance in both medicated and unmedicated people with schizophrenia using an 'odd object touching' task.
Bacon et al.: Showed people with schizophrenia recalled fewer fictional animal names than healthy controls, indicating episodic memory deficits.
Gammond et al. (2017): Suggested that strategic use of memory might mitigate encoding deficits in schizophrenia.

ADHD: Neurologically based disorder identified by attention deficits, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.
Prevalence: More common in males, 5% of the population.
Memory Issues: Mainly concerned with working memory.
- Forward & backward digit span, visual working memory tasks show significant deficits.
- No significant episodic memory deficits.

Ackerman et al. (2018): Examined effects of working memory training in ADHD.
- Both control and ADHD groups improved, but ADHD participants needed medication for improvement.
- Correlation between improvement in working memory and reduction in ADHD symptoms like impulsivity and hyperactivity.

Autism Spectrum Disorders: Range of disorders leading to deficits in social communication, social interaction, and repetitive/restrictive behaviors.
Savant Syndrome: Some individuals have extraordinary cognitive abilities e.g., in visual-based semantic memory.

Ring et al. (2016): Compared people with autism and control group in object combination recognition tasks.
- Found deficits in relational processing and item-specific recognition in people with autism.
Gage and Bowler: Point out implications for testimonies, supporting the need for specific cues for accurate memories in autistic individuals.