Page 71 - Biblical Counseling II-Textbook

Explicit memory: memory of facts and experiences that one can consciously know and “declare.”

Hippocampus: a neural center that is located in the limbic system; helps process explicit memories for
storage.

Storing Implicit and Explicit Memories
“Amnesia victims are in some ways like people with brain damage who cannot consciously recognize
faces but whose physiological responses to familiar faces reveal an implicit (unconscious) recognition.
Their behaviors challenge the idea that memory is a single, unified, conscious system. Instead, we seem
to have two memory systems operating at the same time. Whatever has destroyed conscious recall in
these individuals with amnesia has not destroyed their unconscious capacity for learning. They can learn
how to do something – called implicit memory but
they may not know and declare they know – called
explicit memory” (Myers, p. 190, 2012).

Having read a story once, they will read it faster a
second time, showing implicit memory. But there
will be no explicit memory, for they cannot recall
having seen the story before. If repeatedly shown
the word perfume, they will not recall having seen it.
But if asked the first word that comes to mind in
response to the letters per, they say perfume, readily displaying their learning. Using such tasks, even
Alzheimer’s patients, whose explicit memories for people and events are lost, display an ability to form
new and implicit memories” (Myers, p. 190, 2012). (photo from thepeakperformancecenter.com)

The Hippocampus
‘Damage to the hippocampus, (a temporal lobe neural center that also forms part of the brain’s limbic
system,) disrupts some types of memory. Chickadees and other birds can store food in hundreds of
places and return to these unmarked caches (collections) months later, but not if their hippocampus has
been removed. Like the cortex, the hippocampus is lateralized. (You have two of them, one just above
each ear and about an inch and a half straight in.) Damage to one or the other seems to produce
different results. With left-hippocampus damage, people have trouble remembering verbal information,
but they have no trouble recalling visual designs and locations. With right-hippocampus damage, the
problem is reversed” (Myers, 2009).

The Cerebellum
Although your hippocampus is a temporary processing site for your explicit memories, you could lose it
and still lay down memories for skills and conditioned associations. A doctor tells the story of a brain-
damaged patient whose amnesia left her unable to recognize her physician as, each day, he shook her
hand and introduced himself. One day, after reaching for his hand, she yanked hers back, for the
physician had pricked her with a tack in his palm. The next time he returned to introduce himself she
refused to shake his hand but couldn’t explain why. Having been classically conditioned, she just
wouldn’t do it (Myers, 2009).

The cerebellum, the brain region extending out from the rear of the brainstem, plays a key role in
forming and storing the implicit memories created by classical conditioning. With a damaged
cerebellum, people cannot develop certain conditioned reflexes, such as associating a tone with an

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