ARS 390

Amanda Russo Presentation

I found Amanda Russo’s presentation to be very informative and interesting as well. She talked to us about memory which is the storage and retrieval of experience-induced changes in the brain from a neuroscience perspective. She then talked about whether the memory is good or bad at times and she explained that it’s not always a good thing because there are health conditions such as PTSD. For example, if someone gets bit by a dog then they start to form fear of dogs due to this. She also talked to us about whether or not there is a memory part of the brain. She then brings it back to amnesia which is a disease that targets the memory part of the mind. She then went on to talk about H.M’s case which was about a man who cured his seizures of surgery but then gained amnesia like effects. The H.M case showed scientists that there are different types of memory which are explicit vs. implicit and that there are different stages of memory which are short-term, long-term, and really well consolidated long term. I loved it when she spoke about the different experiments they were working on to see how fear is conditioned in rats and how they found through this that the hippocampus is important for the storage of recent memories. I’m very happy that I got to see her presentation andI’m glad because one I learned a lot more than I did before and I also gained inspiration for our project that we are working on.