Procedural memory
[1] The turn of the century brought a clearer understanding of the functions and structures involved in procedural memory acquisition, storage, and retrieval processes.
However, by refining and improving experimental measures, there has been extensive research using amnesic patients with varying locations and degrees of structural damage.
However, these findings had shortcomings in how they were perceived as amnesic patients sometimes fell short on normal levels of performance and therefore amnesia was viewed as strictly a retrieval deficit.
Because the brain is otherwise healthy, Tadlock has used highly structured methods associated with the Predictive Cycle to successfully remediate individuals with mild to severe reading problems (including dyslexia).
Research suggests that early in skill learning, execution is controlled by a set of unintegrated procedural steps that are held in working memory and attended to one-by-one in a step-by-step fashion.
[34][36] This, of course, has a very positive effect on overall performance by freeing the mind of the need to closely monitor and attend to the more basic, mechanical skills, so that attention can be paid to other processes.
This phenomenon is commonly referred to as choking, and serves as a very interesting exception to the general rule that well-learned skills are robust and resistant to deterioration across a wide range of conditions.
In addition to deliberate practice and automatization of skills, self-consciousness training has been shown to help with reducing the effect of choking under pressure.
Traditionally, "rising to the occasion" or being "clutch" has been used in reference to sporting feats of particular excellence given the magnitude of the event, however there is increasing awareness to the phenomenon in our everyday life.
[52] Current understanding of brain anatomy and physiology suggests that striatal neural plasticity is what allows basal ganglia circuits to communicate between structures and to functionally operate in procedural memory processing.
The initial memory trace is thought to form here between parallel fibers and Purkinje cell and then travel outwards to other cerebellar nuclei for consolidation.
[55] The limbic system is a group of unique brain areas that work together in many interrelated processes involved in emotion, motivation, learning and memory.
Current thinking indicates that the limbic system shares anatomy with a component of the neostriatum already credited with the major task of controlling procedural memory.
Once thought to be functionally separate, this vital section of the brain found on the striatum's back border has only recently been linked to memory and is now being called the marginal division zone (MrD).
To put things simply, the activation of brain regions that work together during procedural memory can be followed because of this limbic system associated membrane protein and its application in molecular and immunohistochemistry research.
Evidence suggests that it may influence neural plasticity in memory systems by adapting brain processing when the environment is changing and an individual is then forced to make a behavioural choice or series of rapid decisions.
It is very important in the process of "adaptive navigation", which serves to help different brain areas respond together during a new situation that has many unknown stimuli and features.
One study used small animals lacking normal levels of CREB family transcription factors to look at the processing of information in the striatum during various tasks.
Current Research indicates that procedural memory problems in Alzheimer's may be caused by changes in enzyme activity in memory-integrating brain regions such as the hippocampus.
Modern findings advance the idea that the histamine system may be responsible for the cognitive deficits found in Alzheimer's and for the potential procedural memory problems that may develop as a result of the psychopathology.
[61] This disease of the central nervous system, like many other procedural-memory related disorders, involves changes in the associated subcortical brain area known as the striatum.
[64] MRI studies have even shown white matter irregularity and basal ganglia subcortical atrophy in these vital areas necessary for both procedural memory and motor-skill.
[68] Neuroimaging studies show that OCD patients perform considerably better on procedural memory tasks because of noticeable over-activation of the striatum brain structures, specifically the frontostriatal circuit.
Current scientific information suggests that the memory performance problems notably shown in patients are controlled by unusual frontostriatal circuits.
[72] MRI studies have shown that schizophrenic patients not currently taking related medication have a smaller putamen, part of the striatum that plays a very important role in procedural memory.
Research has shown that the brain structures that are immediately affected by long-term cocaine abuse include: cerebral hypoperfusion in the frontal, periventricular and temporal-parietal.
Psychostimulants have been shown to be used more frequently today amongst students and other social demographics as a means to study more efficiently or have been abused for their pleasurable side effects.
In fact, within the domain of motor skill, there is evidence showing that no improvement on tasks is shown following a short, non-rapid eye movement (NREM; stages 2–4) sleep, such as a nap.
Research suggests that explicit awareness and understanding of the skill being learned during the acquisition process greatly improves the consolidation of procedural memories during sleep.
[100] Results of several studies provide evidence that suggests procedural memory is not only responsible for sequential unification, but for syntactic priming and grammatical processing as well.
