Brain Damage and Memory

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about some key figures in psychology who have helped researchers learn which areas of the brain play a role in which fields of memory, focusing in particular on: (i) patient H.M., who had a bilateral medial temporal lobectomy to cure his epilepsy, resulting in an apparent complete inability to commit information to his long-term memory, later discovered to be far more localised than first thought; (ii) the categorisation of short-term versus long-term memory; (iii) how the mirror drawing task revealed that a skill is distinct from the memory of a skill, highlighting the existence of procedural memory as distinct from declarative memory, which itself is split into episodic and semantic memory.

About the lecturer

Dr Ashok Jansari is a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Dr Jansari’s research interests include memory disorders, prosopagnosia, executive functions, and synaesthesia. Dr Jansari is most famous for his research into prosopagnosia, having made numerous TV appearances, including on BBC1’s The One Show, as well as hosting his own ‘Neuro Talk’ YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/c/DrAshokJansariNeuroTalk/featured

Some of Dr Jansari's recent publications include 'Acquired synaesthesia following 2C-B use' (2019), 'Using virtual reality to investigate multitasking ability in individuals with frontal lobe lesions' (2019), and 'Identification from CCTV: Assessing police super-recogniser ability to spot faces in a crown and susceptibility to change blindness' (2018).