Need some guidance here....help please!! !

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Education is usually a cumulative process regardless of whether we're talking about formal education or not. It is fundamentally dependent on long-term declarative memory, particularly semantic and depending on the subject, procedural, memory. In order to progress to intermediate algebra, a student must be able to remember a significant and relevant amount of what they learned in introductory algebra. The same is true for just about any subject and I need not give further examples. Finally...provided the student wants to work in the field in which they were educated, (say as an MD) they need to be able to recall a significant and relevant amount of everything they learned in school that pertains to their field. Here we are getting close to the crux of the matter in my case.

Example:


I did quite well, grade-wise, in classes I took in college like psychology, history and sociology. I could go over my notes and/or read the relevant chapters in the texts the night before an exam and get an A on it. However, my memory was "prompted" or "cued" by the exam questions irrespective of whether they were mulitple choice, true/false, or completion. But I could remember very little about what I "learned" after the exam was over. If someone would've asked me to have a serious discussion about what I "learned" in chaps 1-3 of a psych test, I wouldn't be able to remember enough about it to say more then a few words. If someone asked me to write a paper about what I "learned" in chap 1-3 from memory alone, I would only be able to write a few words about it. Now I know my study habits were less-than ideal (putting off studying until the night before an exam) and "chunking" works alot better for most people. Nevertheless....I don't think this had much to do with why I retain so little about any given subject. After all, when i'm reading recreationally, I read a chapter or two at a time and I STILL only retain the most miniscule amount of what i've read. So provided I could even comprehend say, introductory algebra, (I dropped it twice in college and then, perhaps foolishlessly, opted for course substitutions in mathematics which I was eligble for) I doubt I could remember most of what i'd need to remember to be successful at intermediate algebra.

This goes for EVERYTHING no matter how well I initially comprehend the subject material. I can COMPREHEND history, sociology and psychology (among many other subjects...but i'm sketchy with science and hopeless at it if it involves any math AT ALL) well enough. Remembering everything (or more accurately.....ANYTHING substantial) i'd need to remember about a given subject in order to move on to a higher level within the same subject seems to be another story though.


I could on and on.....I just wanted to give a general idea of how my long-term memory seems to function based on my own self-observations.

On second thought Janissy, I do believe the aforementioned impairment MIGHT have something to do with that particular test being timed. For one thing, people with NLD often have problems with visual tracking. For another, they can also have problems with processing speed. However, my processing speed index score on this particular WAIS was 108 (70th percentile/average) so go figure. No matter what...I don't see how any of this has anything to do with my deficits (once again....assuming they're real and they seem as real to me as the ground under my feet ) in long-term memory. Maybe it might if the deficits weren't nearly as extreme as I believe them to be.

Not that I have Epilespy, but this article is relevant to me since it shows how serious long term memory problems can elude standard neuropsychological memory tests (such as the Weschler Memory Scale):




Patients with epilepsy frequently complain of memory difficulties yet perform normally on standard neuropsychological tests of memory. It has been suggested that this may be due to an impairment of very long-term memory consolidation processes, beyond those normally assessed in the neuropsychological clinic. We carried out a prospective study of verbal memory over a long-term retention interval of 8 weeks in patients with epilepsy and in controls. Results were compared with performance on conventional tests of memory. Despite normal learning and retention over 30 min, patients with epileptic foci in the left temporal lobe performed disproportionately poorly on the long-term test compared with both patients with epileptic foci in the right temporal lobe and controls. Our findings provide evidence for an extended period of memory consolidation and point to the critical region for this process, at least for verbal material, in the left temporal lobe. The implications of our findings for clinical assessment and therapeutic management of patients with epilepsy are discussed.

epilepsy; memory; consolidation; long-term; verbal

HAD = Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale; NART = National Adult Reading Test; TEA = transient epileptic amnesia; WAIS-R = Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Revised; WCST = Wisconsin Card Sort Test; WMS-R = Wechsler Memory Scale—Revised


Introduction
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Abstract
Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion
References


Patients with epilepsy frequently complain of memory problems that are often undetected by conventional memory tests. In this paper we have investigated beyond normal retention intervals to prospectively evaluate long-term memory consolidation processes in patients with epilepsy.

Traditionally, theories of human memory have focused on a limited range of time intervals. Information that is assessed after a few seconds is thought to be held within short-term or working memory systems; information that has been stored for longer than a few minutes has usually been assumed to be represented within long-term memory. The establishment of memory within long-term storage is thought to be mediated via some form of consolidation process. While such consolidation may not be complete after a few minutes (and indeed may continue for weeks, months or years) it is often assumed that its general efficacy can be evaluated after relatively brief delays. Thus, clinical tests of memory have tended to focus on the short-term/long-term distinction, measuring memory either after seconds or minutes (e.g. Wechsler, 1987). Comparatively little is known about long-term memory beyond this relatively narrow interval (in the case of standard neuropsychological assessments extending to a mere 30 min), and it is often assumed that there is little to know. This may be an unwarranted assumption.

The most usual means of investigating longer-term declarative memory has been to use a retrospective research strategy: comparing the veracity of material that has been acquired at various times in the past. The aim is one of determining whether there is a difference in the relative vulnerability of memories of different ages, which may illuminate the dynamics of a consolidation process. The relative sparing of older memories in retrograde amnesia [Ribot's law (Ribot, 1882)] is often cited in this regard. On clinical examination, public or personal events occurring in close proximity to the onset of amnesia may seem to be disproportionately impaired and older memories may seem to be stronger and spared. Comparable findings have been reported from patients with transient retrograde memory problems following from ECT (e.g. Squire and Cohen, 1982). The fact that this gradient is directly opposed to normal patterns of forgetting—memory being better at the longest intervals—has been interpreted in favour of an extended period of memory consolidation (Squire et al., 1984). According to Squire and colleagues, while memories are in a transitory consolidation phase, they are relatively vulnerable to disruption. Loss of these more vulnerable memory traces may thus account for a pattern of temporally graded retrograde amnesia in which memories for recent events are more impaired than those for more remote events. However, when put to the scientific test, this evidence of an inverse temporal gradient has been controversial. Memories belonging to different epochs in an individual's life may be stored differently and may even have been acquired in a different way.

More compelling evidence consistent with of a period of extended consolidation can be found from the study of patients with transient epileptic amnesia (TEA). In this syndrome, transient episodes of anterograde amnesia are reported during which the patient has great difficulty in acquiring new information. In the interictal phase, anterograde memory function may appear entirely normal (Zeman et al., 1998)—at least on tasks involving retention intervals of 30 min. However, the simple event of TEA may also lead to permanent gaps in retrograde memory, sometimes affecting events which are personally salient and (most importantly) predate the onset of the attacks of anterograde TEA (Zeman et al., 1998). Indeed, there is evidence that the retrograde amnesia associated with TEA can extend back over a period of 30 years (Zeman et al., 1998).

Retrospective testing of the status of declarative memories acquired at an earlier phase of life is a difficult methodological strategy (McCarthy and Warrington, 1990). At the very least, allowance has to be made for the simple fact that everyone forgets, resulting in an evaluation of changes in function across a shifting (but indeterminate) baseline. Added to this complication we have to allow for the fact that memories of different ages often have different degrees of contextual embedding (e.g. semantic memories versus episodic memories) and are therefore possibly correlated with different neural substrates. Older memories that are recovered in the clinical setting may also be easier to retrieve because they are favourite tales and have been retrieved more frequently. Finally, memories belonging to different time periods may not be of equivalent salience, either at the time of their acquisition or with respect to the individual's current life. Retrospective techniques are therefore not ideal for assessing the status of memories over long periods of time.

The optimum way of studying the changes in memory that take place over an extended period of time is to conduct a prospective study of memory in which material is acquired and tested under controlled conditions. This approach has been adopted with some success in the study of people with organic amnesic syndromes (e.g. Huppert and Piercy, 1979). However, the major problem with amnesic populations has been in establishing adequate levels of initial learning: declarative anterograde memory is globally impaired in the populations of interest.

People with temporal lobe epilepsy provide a natural laboratory for the study of human memory (Snyder, 1997). Complaints of memory impairment are common in epilepsy, and verbal memory deficits have been reported in association with left hippocampal sclerosis (e.g. Baxendale et al., 1998; for a review, see Baxendale, 1995). However, the paradox remains that their problems are often inconsistent with (or are disproportionate to) their functioning on standard anterograde memory tests (Gallassi et al., 1988; Corcoran and Thompson, 1992), which, as we have seen, sample only a limited range of retention intervals. It has been shown that, far from exaggerating their difficulties due to neurosis (Vermulen et al., 1993), people with epilepsy actually underestimate the frequency of their everyday memory failures (Thompson and Corcoran, 1992). As in patients with TEA, the presence of an epileptic focus is likely to disrupt extended processes of memory consolidation but may spare performance when the retention interval is short.

There is some direct evidence consistent with an epileptic consolidation deficit in the single case-study literature. O'Connor and colleagues reported a patient (with temporal lobe epilepsy arising in the context of a paraneoplastic encephalitis) who demonstrated an abnormally fast forgetting rate for a word list over a period of a week despite normal learning and retention after 2 h (O'Connor et al., 1997). A fuller evaluation of memory function after a long retention interval has been reported by Kapur and colleagues (Kapur et al., 1997). They assessed memory prospectively in a patient (PA) whose presenting complaint was of amnesia for events from the preceding 3–24 months. Kapur and colleagues found that PA's memory was similar to controls following a 30 min delay but was impaired following a 6 week delay. While both of these studies are consistent with a consolidation deficit, they do not allow us to determine whether such problems are frequent in epilepsy or whether they are associated with a specific type or location of epileptic activity. There is one group study which suggests that consolidation may be a particular problem for people with temporal lobe epilepsy (Martin et al., 1991). Martin and colleagues found no difference between patients and controls in recall of a word list after a delay of 30 min. However, the patients with temporal lobe epilepsy showed a disproportionate impairment following a delay of 24 h. Although it is uncontroversial that memory disorders are associated with gross pathology in the temporal lobe, and many studies have investigated severe, lesional epilepsy or even, in the case of Martin and colleagues, have included postoperative patients, the situation with regard to milder cases is unclear.

We planned a prospective group study of long-term verbal memory consolidation in patients with epilepsy and healthy controls. By the use of a verbal measure we were able to equate initial learning levels between individual cases. Moreover, we hoped that this approach would enable us to evaluate any interaction between the locus of epileptic activity and very long-term retention. Specifically, we hypothesized that epileptic activity during the retention interval would compromise memory consolidation and that these effects should be strongest for verbal material in patients with a primary focus in the left temporal lobe. A further aim was to examine the relationship of very long-term memory to performance on standard neuropsychological memory tests and psychological factors.

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/con ... /123/3/472

you might like to ask for a thyroid test to see if its functioning ok. it does seem like such a simple thing but sometimes the simple things get overlooked.. i have trouble with remembering things too, and i didnt use to have

for instance. i was engrossed in big brother this year. only the third time ive watched it through and really didnt miss an episode
and yet i could not tell you who won or who else participated and anything about it. but that might be tbecause i have hypothyroid (doubtful) or it might just be because i dismiss it once the 'buzz' has gone from it. i can read a book and be engrossed in it but have to go back and check a page for a name etc, or their reltionship to another character.
i think its because i am emgrossed in how the story is working (patterns again) but the characters themselves are not interesting to me. this might be why you dont retain knowledge now either .. but would explain the feeling of knowing what the book is about.
also as you get older beacuse your efficiently thinking,.,. and saving space on your brains hard drive. you dont retain information iyou can easily get back off the web. i do however have a lot more places bookmarked than i used to. i think its intelligent to do this rather than filing it away in my head, im not always in control of how my brain makes decisions for me to be more efficient.. so it annoys me and makes me feel like i am becoming old with age. the day i cant remember i have a bookmark is the day really i will be suffering from old age dementia

Horus wrote:

I always have trouble with ent vs ant. I think a lot of people do. I know it's one or the other, but can't remember which. It's no indicator of LTM problem in my opinion. I think, in my case, that it has something to do with opposites; either/or situations, where I know the answer is "either this" "or that". For some reason these situations stump me. This has interfered in my school work and also in employment. I am faced with an option and must make a choice about a certain rule or procedure using one of two alternatives. I know what the alternatives are but can't associate them with the procedure.

A better way to explain it - I have to push a certain button in order to bring about a certain desired result. I have to choose between the red button or the green button. If I push the wrong button all hell will break loose. If I push the right button everything will be groovy. I can't remember what button to push. Is it red or is it green. Anxiety and indecision. Can't go back and ask the boss or the teacher, he's already told me which button to push 100 times.

The solution to the above is to keep a little note book and write those either/or button pushing rules down for quick and easy reference. Yeah, it's a drag. But it's better than pushing the wrong button.