Neurobiological Views of Memory

Publisher Summary The structure and utilization of memory is central to one's knowledge of the past, interpretation of the present, and prediction of the future. Therefore, the understanding of the structural organization of memory at both the psychological and neurobiological levels is of paramount importance. Even though scientists have been studying the neurobiological basis of memory for many years, theoretical views concerning the organization of memory are surprisingly diverse. This chapter presents some of these views. It presents a number of different theoretical views of the structural organization of memory at different levels of analysis. Memory is a complex phenomenon due to a large number of potential interactions that are associated with the organization of memory at the psychological and neural system level. As a result, the study of the neurobiological basis of the structure of memory readily lends itself to multiple theoretical analyses and view-points. These neurobiological analyses can vary from an emphasis on a single versus multiple tasks, single versus dual memory systems or single versus multiple memory attributes. Critical experiments have been presented in some detail to capture the flavor of each type of analysis and associated theoretical points of view. In the last section, an attempt has been made to integrate all the different theoretical approaches and views into a single multidimensional attribute model of memory. With respect to the attribute model, there appear to be different neural substrates that mediate different attributes associated with a data-based and expectancy or knowledge-based structural organization of memory. The neural substrates can operate independently of each other as indexed by empirical observation of double dissociations between specific neural regions.