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Analysis Of 'The Matrix In Your Head'

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The Matrix in Your Head Extensive research has shown the important role of the hippocampus in our ability to store memories in a spatial context. This spatial sense is not only related to time, but also to the correspondent physical place where memories were created. The results of the study performed by John O'Keefe and Jonathan Dostrovski in 1971 have further proved this concept of a “cognitive map.” One of the first evidences of the role the hippocampus plays in storing our memories was established in the 1950s, when surgeon William Scoville removed most of the hippocampus of one of his patients in an effort to save the patient's life. After surgery, Scoville realized that the patient was not able to form new memories. O'Keefe continued the research by working with rats. He discovered that the brain has a built in map, the rat's brain would fire up a certain activity in the brain every time the animal was at a certain place. Almost as if the brain had a built in burglar alarm which was triggered at certain places, but not others. …show more content…

At night, when the rat went to asleep, the experiences of the day would play out in the rat's mind and concluded the process of placing the memories in long term storage. The mental playback in the rat's mind included the different locations where the rat had been by utilizing this cognitive map in its mind. This map is formed by a grid of triangles, each triangle triggers a specific signal when the rat is in that area. The triangles on the grid overlap forming an hexagonal pattern which extends throughout the landscaping, enabling the tracking of the rat. This same tracking system facilitates the recollection of not only the details of the event, but also the space and time in which the event

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The human brain is the most extraordinary thing in the universe but sometimes we create false memories without knowing. The human brain consists of a hundred billion neurons, as many as the entire Milky Way galaxy (“Voytek”). It stores numerous memories from childhood to the present. The majority of us, however,

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This research led to questions about the top down process, in which the different areas of the brain are compared to “the conductor of an orchestra, waving its [sic] baton and directing the players” (Lehrer). Miller conducts tests with monkeys, by using a series of dots and an organizational process that the animal goes through to get to the insight moment. Lehrer made a point to connect his work to people’s real life experiences. His main example is the fire in Montana in the summer of 1949.

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At the time the physician removed parts of his hippocampus as a way to stop his seizures. HM seizures went away, but he could not form any new memories. However, one form of memory left intact in both HM and Leonard is the ability to learn skills. This ability is known as procedural memory, a memory that is shown by performance rather than by conscious recollection (Kalat, 1998), it allows us to learn how to do things such as ride a bike or play an instrument. The areas of the brain outside of the hippocampus are involved in procedural memory, which is why an injury that results in anterograde amnesia doesn't affect procedural memory.

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Atkinson, R. C., and Shiffrin, R. M. Some speculations on storage and retrieval processes in long-term memory. Technical Report 127, Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences, Stanford University, 1968. Thorndike, E. L. (1898). Animal intelligence: An experimental study of the associative processes in animals.

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His study proved that the monkey’s brain restructured itself. This test of the brain’s capability to change is what’s known as

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Obsessive use of GPS may result in the shrinking of the hippocampus, studies find. The hippocampus is an area of the brain responsible for spatial ability. Specifically memory, navigation and spatial orientation. These skills are especially important in finding shortcuts and new routes. Shrinking of the hippocampus is often associated with aging, and is one of the first signs of Alzheimer 's disease.

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J.D. Salinger is a renowned contemporary writer. He is mainly known for his book The Catcher in the Rye. This novel has been studied in many different school districts and colleges. Salinger wrote many other significant works throughout the course of his writing career, and he received several literary awards as well. This will be a complete overlook of J.D. Salinger’s life, accomplishments, and how his works reflect his life.

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Describe and evaluate relevant theories of flashbulb memory. An understanding of human memory is substantial in the study of cognition. As one of the most essential and influential cognitive process, memory affects various aspects of our daily life. Examples of its importance include functioning in everyday life, recognizing faces of people around us, remembering some of our basic skills that we gained through knowledge and experience. Mainly, without memory we would have the same lack of knowledge as newborn infants.

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In the Crash Course video, I learned about the different structures of the brain. Franz Joseph Gall, the first phrenologist, introduced a new theory in the early 1800’s. Gall believed that a person’s personality was linked to the ridges and bumps on the skull. However, scientists today understand that the brain contains different parts that are responsible for specific functions. One system of the brain is commonly referred to as the “old brain”.

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The hippocampus is responsible for transferring short term memory to long term memory. It is one of the few parts of the

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In the United States of America, conservatives and liberals have been the dominant ideological perspectives followed throughout the twentieth century. The radical ideological perspective has always been on the fringe, filled by peoples whose views don’t fit into the normal matrix of right or left. Ideological perspectives tend to be based on the themes of change, human nature, individual behavior, family, society, the role of the government and the economic system. The conservative ideological perspective strongly believes that individuals have the right to free will, in which they assume responsibility for their own life.

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This is what other researchers have thought of too, and therefore a conclusion was made that additional processes have been taking place as well. Another strength is that there is neuropsychological evidence for this model as a patient, HM (Milner, 1966) underwent surgery which impaired his hippocampus and in turn affected his long-term memory as it no longer functioned properly, whereas his short-term memory was rather functional. Due to this we can conclude that these two processes are involved in the process of memory, as one of the stores was affected when the brain was damaged but the other was not (Baddeley, 2009).

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The biological approach to the basis of memory is explained in terms of underlying biological factors such as the activity of the nervous system, genetic factors, biochemical and neurochemicals. In general terms memory is our ability to encode, store, retain and recall information and past experiences afterwards in the human brain. In biological terms, memory is the recreation of past experiences by simultaneous activation or firing of neurons. Some of the major biopsychological research questions on memory are what are the biological substrates of memory, where are memories stored in the brain, how are memories assessed during recall and what is the mechanism of forgetting. The two main reasons that gave rise to the interest in biological basis of memory are that researchers became aware of the fact that many memory deficits arise from injuries to the brain.

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One famous case of amnesia supporting Squire's view is patient H.M. (Scoville & Milner, 1957), who had parts of his left and right temporal lobe, hippocampus, amygdala and surrounding areas of both removed. He developed severe anterograde amnesia, the inability to learn new information, resulting in an almost completely absent short-term memory storage. He also had moderate retrograde amnesia, unable to remember information between 3 to 11 years prior to his surgery, but with other long-term memories unaffected. Explaining this, Squire argued that memories are consolidated in the hippocampus, easily disrupted by trauma during this. They become less dependent on the hippocampus with time, eventually being stored in the neocortex (Alvarez &

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There are other movements, beside physical body movement, allowed by our brain of which individuals are not conscious, or at least not fully conscious; namely, the action of remembering and forgetting. According to Pierre Nora memory “remains in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting” (8) process which he claims to be “unconscious”. It is given to this dialectic, as Jan Assmann mentions in his essay Collective Memory and Cultural Identity that ““the survival of the type” in the sense of a cultural pseudo-species is a function of the cultural memory…” (126), which means: first, that the identity of a place is not inherited through genes; and second, that it depends on individuals’ conscious effort to maintain it. Individual memory or communicative memory as Assmann calls it “does not extent more than eighty to (at the very most) hundred years…”

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