Presentation of “How Many Memory Systems Are There?” (1985)

1. Presentation of “How Many Memory Systems Are There?”(1985) Paper by Endel Tulving Rotman Research Institute of Baycrest Centre, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada Presenter: Mason Kelsey

2. Contents of Paper • Introduction • Pretheoretical Considerations • Why Multiple Memory Systems? • The Concept of System • Procedural, Semantic, and Episodic Memories • A Ternary Classification • Other Classificatory Schemes • Nature and Logic of Evidence • Evidence of Memory Systems • Contingency Analyses of Measures of Memory • Stochastic Independence • Independence Is Not Independence • How Many Systems? • Additional Papers Read and Used for Presentation

3. Introduction • Memory is a puzzle • Memory is a Number of Systems Serving Different Purposes • Seeks to Describe a Ternary Classificatory Scheme • Wants to Discuss the nature and logic of Evidence for Multiple Systems

4. What Does Tulving Ignore? • Only Interested in the Recall or Retrieval of Existing Memories • Ignores How Memories are Created or Stored • Ignores that All Memories are Event Based • Ignores that All Memory Types Overlap Each Other • Ignores that Some Memories Don’t Fit Well in Any One Category

5. Why Multiple Memory Systems? • Generalizations are Difficult for a Monolithic Design • Talking about Particular Kinds of Memory are Possible • Analogous to Multiple Pathways for Sight • Most existing Theories about Mental Process are wrong. • Failure of Imagination

6. Tulving’s Concept of System • Easier to work at a level above biological • A System points to stronger tests • A Major subdivision of Overall Organization • Relatedness tied to identical components • Systematically related • “A given memory system makes it possible for organisms to perform memory tasks that entail operating components unique to that system.” • What is wrong with the sixth bullet item?

7. The Classification Tree

8. Memory Types From Paper • Procedural – Action based skills like riding a bike • Semantic – Verbal or Symbol based Abstractions that we call Facts • Episodic – Memories of Events with a When, Where, Who, What, and a perspective from the viewpoint of the self. Considered by Tulving to be the highest form of memory and last developed by evolution.

9. Development of Tulving’s Design • First formulated in 1972 paper, “Episodic and semantic memory” as heuristic tools • By 1983 in book “Elements of Episodic Memory” episodic memory was seen as having a biological basis • Book corrected testing errors of earlier papers: • What, where, & when instead of just what • Distinguish between remembering from a list and remembering the event of learning from a list • No necessary correlation between behavior and conscious experience

10. Tulving’s MonohierarchicalStructure of Memory Systems “MNESIS: Towards the Integration of Current Multisystem Models of Memory” by Francis Eustache & Béatrice Desgranges (2008)

11. Memory Types From Paper • Procedural – Action based skills like riding a bike • Semantic – Verbal or Symbol based Abstractions that we call Facts • Episodic – Memories of Events with a When, Where, Who, What, and a perspective from the viewpoint of the self.

12. Memory and Consciousness Memory SystemConsciousness Episodic Autonoetic Semantic Noetic Procedural Anoetic

13. Other Classificatory SchemesMNESIS Model of Memory “MNESIS: Towards the Integration of Current Multisystem Models of Memory” by Francis Eustache & Béatrice Desgranges (2008)

14. Major Open Issues • The number of Major Memory Systems • Identity of the Two Non-Procedural Systems and their Relationship with each other • Order of development - Tulving thinks both phylogenetic and ontogenetic development of semantic system precedes episodic memory system.

15. Questions for Discussion • Since Semantic memories are a more abstract memory, doesn’t it make more sense to assume it is the most recently developed evolutionary development of memory types? • If animals other than humans have memories, what would you suppose Tulving would accept them as having and why? • Could a test be created for whether a nonhuman animal can have memories? If not, what prevents that?

16. More Questions for Discussion • In another paper Tulving says that Episodic Memory is a recent human development. In a section of Functional Neuroimaging he attempts to tie Episodic Memory’s loci to the prefrontal lobes. But prefrontal lobes developed in monkeys long before there were humans. This seems to weaken his position that all nonhuman animals don’t have episodic memories. What are your comments? • Tulving describes episodic memory as a greater evolutionary achievement than the visual system. Do you agree? Why or why not? • What is your earliest Episodic Memory from your life?

17. An Episodic Memory? 2nd and 4th Birthday for Edwina and Mason Kelsey, March, 1943

18. Criticisms of Episodic Memory • Psychological/Philosophical • Not Parsimonious • Vague Concept with Fuzzy Boundaries • Didn’t conform to established theory (see Thomas Kuhn) • Not predicted by existing theory • Potential proliferation of memory types • Metaphysics of identifying hidden systems • Existing testing used did not differentiate • Strangeness of terms autonoetic and noetic • Biological • Difficulty in determining hierarchy and relationships • Not mediated by discrete neural subsystems • PET and fMRI imaging techniques didn’t exist yet to show unique storage areas for Episodic Memories

19. Responses to Criticism • Intuitively sensible <Big Red Flag> • Complements the process-oriented approach to memory <But only considers Retrieval processes> • Not a change to the relation between processes and systems <Same as Above> • Hypothesis of Episodic Memory still immature and not fully developed • Not enough room to address all criticisms • Cites Benjamin Franklin’s response to question of what use electricity was. “Wait.”

20. Biological Basis for Episodic Memory • There is encouraging improvement in quantity and quality of evidence • Two main successful approaches: • Neuropsychological studies of brain damage • Functional neuroimaging of healthy youths

21. Two Early Neuropsychological Studies • 1957, Famous Case of H.M., suffering from epileptic seizures, treated with bilateral resection of large chunks of medial temporal lobe, resulting in loss of declarative (explicit) memory. Tulving assumes episodic memory loss is from hippocampal damage and semantic memory lose is from cortical tissue damage. Hypothesized that the two memory systems exist separate in the healthy brain. • 1958, Nielsen’s neurological investigations of many patients with two independent types of amnesia: temporal (episodic) and categorical (semantic).

22. Case of K.C. • Extensive brain lesions in multiple cortical and subcortical brain regions, including temporal lobes as the result of a motorcycle accident • Total loss of episodic memory with no autonoetic consciousness “from birth to present” • Impaired ability to “pick up novel generic information” or “remember ongoing experiences” • Completely normal in all other respects with complete noetic consciousness but “deep anterograde amnesia for both personal experiences and [related] semantic information” since the accident that caused his amnesia • Cannot imagine his future any more than his past

23. Case Experiments with K.C. • Purpose of experiments was to compare semantic with episodic abilities under controlled conditions • Demonstrated “that he was able to learn slowly…substantial portions of [factual] information normally over weeks and months, while not being able to recollect any visits to the laboratory…”

24. Case Study of R.S. • Study by Kitchener et al. (1998) • Suffered bout of herpes simplex encephalitis • Lost all signs of functioning episodic memory but he could still acquire semantic knowledge

25. Case Study of Three Patients • Study by Vargha-Khadem and collaborators (1997) • All suffered from Anoxic Accidents which produced severe bilateral hippocampal atrophy • “None…can reliably remember ongoing experiences and recollect past personal happenings” • “Making near-normal progress in school”

26. Other Case Studies • Other studies of similar cases of “impaired episodic memory and largely spared semantic memory” exist. • “Asymmetry always easy to detect” • Calabrese et al. (1996) • Cermak & O’Connor (1983) • DellaSala et al. (1993) • Kopelman et al. (1998) • Markowitsch et al. (1993) • Rousseaux et al. (1997) • Viskontas et al. (2000) • Summary of these cases done by Kapur (1999) and later by Wheeler & McMillan (2001) • Different interpretations exist; in anoxic cases partial episodic memory capability may exist • Important criticism: No Independent Verification

27. Questions for Discussion • In another paper Tulving says that Episodic Memory is a recent “human” development. In his section on Functional Neuroimaging he attempts to tie Episodic Memory’s loci to the prefrontal lobes. But prefrontal lobes developed in monkeys long before there were humans. Does this weaken his position that at all nonhuman animals don’t have episodic memories?

28. Tulving’s Methods • People are show familiar words then given two different “memory” tests on studied & unstudied words. • Test One: Recognition of words on list. Should be aided by episodic memory in recognition • Test Two: Word fragment completion test. Should be aided by semantic memory. • Results showed test one results degrades with time but test two shows only a little degradation.

29. Chart of Retention from Two Tests

30. Stochastic Independence Left Chart: Probability of recognition conditionalized on fragment completion as a function of overall recognition hit rate. Right Chart: Probablility of recognition conditionalized on fragment completion, anagram solution, and face identification as a function of overall recognition hit rate. Both Charts indicate Semantic and Episodic memory are completely uncorrelated.

31. Facial Pattern RecognitionStudy by Anne Eillis Faces Memorized Easier with the nose present. Test Faces Recognized 24 Hours Later Much More Difficult without a Nose Implies that Nose is used as a Framing Point

32. Functional Neuroimaging of Memory • Main tools are PET, fMRI, and electrophysiological recordings, both from scalp and implanted electrodes • Subtraction Method used in neuroimaging. • HERA (hemispheric encoding/retrieval asymmetry) model is one result of PET studies by Tulving (1994) • Left prefrontal cortex more involved than right in retrieval of information from semantic memory • Left prefrontal cortex more involved than right in encoding for episodic memory • Right prefrontal cortex more involved than left in episodic memory retrieval or attempts at retrieval • Oddly enough, nothing is said of Semantic memory encoding • HERA Model also reveals words are processed mainly in the left hemisphere while unfamiliar faces in the right.

33. Retrieval and Activation Sites • Six episodic “retrieval mode sites” were found in the prefrontal lobes, “five in prefrontal cortex, three strong ones in the right and two weaker ones in the left hemisphere, and one in the medial anterior cingulate.” • From paper by Marie M.P. Vandekerckhove, et al. (2005), “Common sites of episodic memory activation include: (1) largely bilateral portions of the medial and superior temporal lobes, hippocampus and parahippocampus, (2) portions of the ventral, medial, superior and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, (3) the anterior and posterior cingulate, including the retrosplenial, cortex, (4) the parietal cortex, and (5) portions of the cerebellum.”

34. How Many Systems? • Tulvings Model of Memory depends on both conceptual and experimental evidence that is associative. • There are several basic assumptions that Tulving does not adequately address: • Retrieval instead of Storing, • Evolutionary phylogenetics and ontogenetics, • Episodic Higher Than Semantic. • Lack of a Biological Basis, Metaphor Based, vulnerable to criticism of “Folk Psychology”. • Case studies exist of persons who have lost episodic but not semantic memories. But is this just because episodic memory depend on having more to lose? • PET and fMRI suggest that different processes and loci exist in the brain for encoding and retrieval to support episodic and semantic memories. But is this due to selective bias in subjects studied?

35. Papers Read and Used • Cristina M. Atance and Daniela K. O’Neill (2001). Episodic future thinking. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences, 5:12, 533-539. • Francis Eustache and Beatrice Desgranges (2008). MNESIS: Towards the Integration of Current Multisystem Models of Memory. Neuropsychological Review, 18, 53-69. • Michael B. Miller, et al. (2002). Hemispheric Encoding Asymmetry is More Apparent Than Real. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14:5, 702-708. • Bertram Opitz, et al. (2000). Functional Asymmetry of Human Prefrontal Cortex: Encoding and Retrieval of Verbally and Nonverbally Coded Information. Learning & Memory, 7, 85-96. • Adrian M. Owen (2003). HERA today, gone tomorrow? TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences, 7:9, 383-384. • Endel Tulving, et al. (1994). Hemispheric encoding/retrieval asymmetry in episodic memory: Positron emission tomography findings, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 91, 2016-2020. • Endel Tulving (2002). Episodic Memory: From Mind to Brain, Anjual Reviews in Psychology, 53:1, pp. 1-25. • Endel Tulving (2007). Are There 256 Different Kinds of Memory? The Foundations of Remembering: Essays in Honor of Henry L. Roediger, III, Ed. By James Nairne, pp. 39-52 • Marie M. P. Vandekerckhove, et al. (2005). Bi-hemispheric engagement in the retrieval of autobiographical episodes, Behavioral Neurology, 16, 203-210.