Dissociation to integration: reconstructing the study of memory

Thu, 05/31/2007 - 02:40 - NLN

While the "modal model of memory" is still widely taught and accepted as a general theory, an enormous amount of recent research has focused on how short-term memory enables higher cognitive processes like those involved in planning, goals, and executive functions. Yet this research has revealed surprisingly intricate links between short- and long-term memory.

Increasingly, it appears that interactions among prefrontal areas (traditionally thought to be important for short-term memory) and medial temporal lobe areas (traditionally thought to be important for long-term memory) are important for understanding a wide variety of behaviors. For example, some claim the hippocampus may be important for encoding novel actions or goals, and others claim that the prefrontal cortex is responsible for encoding and retrieval from long-term memory.

But it would be easy to carry this logic too far: anyone who's taken Psych 101 is familiar with the famous case of HM, and similar patients who tragically illustrate the clear dissociability of long and short-term memory. In a recent article, Burgess & Hitch address this apparent paradox from the perspective of computational models of memory, and suggest that the problem for understanding the integrated-yet-dissociable nature of memory may emerge from a failure to consider the integrative role of "context" across all forms of memory.

Read full story in Developing Intelligence