Time and Consolidation

Suzanne Ardanowski

3-4-08

Feeling Brain

 

            I am writing my research paper on memory, which I was just working on all day. I need some sleep so that my learned memories can fully consolidate and enhance! To pull off of some ideas in my paper and in the reading, I am thinking more about consolidation and reconsolidation. McGaugh says that consolidation is evolutionary and occurs over time. The issue of how much time seems to be dependent on what type of memory is being consolidated. In some of the amnesia cases, (McGaugh) a woman lost recollection of her second language following a stroke, HM lost a few years before his surgery, people lost remembrances of changes done to their house prior to a brain injury. Is it the type of memory that takes longer to consolidate and this is why it is lost or is it the way in which the brain is damaged, or both?  Are certain memories thought to now take years to truly fully consolidate or does it just appear that way but in fact they are lost because of the way the damage occurred and not necessarily because they were not consolidated? I think it is interesting how evolution, nature, God, universe-whatever the case may be-seems to have the implicit procedural/motor skills as more resilient to amnesia than episodic, explicit memories.  Is this a fair observation?  I also like the associative memory network for fear on page 213 in Ledoux. I think you can even expand on this by adding a whole unconscious level as well.