Spatial memory

From Psychology Wiki

Community portal · Tasks to do · News · Help

Clinical · Educational · Ind&Org · Other fields · Professional · Transpersonal · World

Assessment | Biopsychology | Comparative | Cognitive | Developmental | Language
Personality | Philosophy | Research Methods | Social | Statistics

Cognitive Psychology: Attention · Learning · Memory · Motivation · Perception · Thinking

---

In cognitive psychology and neuroscience, spatial memory is the part of memory responsible for recording information about one's environment and its spatial orientation. For example, a person's spatial memory is required in order to navigate around a familiar city, just as a rat's spatial memory is needed to learn the location of food at the end of a maze. It is often argued that a person's, or an animal's, spatial memories are summarised in a cognitive map.

Spatial memories are formed after an organism gathers and processes sensory information about its surroundings (especially vision and proprioception). In general, mammals require a functioning hippocampus (particularly area CA1) in order to form and process memories about space. There is some evidence that human spatial memory is strongly tied to the right hemisphere of the brain ^[1][2][3].

Spatial learning requires both NMDA and AMPA receptors, consolidation requires NMDA receptors, and the retrieval of spatial memories requires AMPA receptors ^[4]. In rodents, spatial memory has been shown to covary with the size of a part of the hippocampal mossy fiber projection.^[5]

The study of spatial memory provides valuable information about the type of complex processes which occurs in humans. It gives insight, into complex procedures. For example, species such as the grey squirrel or Clark's Nutcracker, which are scatter hoarders (making numerous small caches, usually of nuts) show a remarkable ability to return to their caches months later. Such species often have a larger hippocampus, relative to overall brain size, than related non-hoarding species. Spatial memory is also important in animal migration, and in foraging in complex environments with many different food sources which become available in different seasons, the situation that faces many frugivorous primates.

Contents 1 Important Cortical Regions 2 See also 3 References & Bibliography 4 Key texts 4.1 Books 4.2 Papers 5 Additional material 5.1 Books 5.2 Papers 6 External links

[edit] Important Cortical Regions

• Prefrontal cortex
• Retrosplenial cortex
• Posterior parietal cortex
• Perirhinal cortex
• Entorhinal cortex
• Hippocampus

[edit] See also

• Attention versus memory in prefrontal cortex
• Direction perception
• Eidetic imagery
• Learning
• LTP
• Memory
• Migratory behavior (animal)
• Morris water maze
• Navigation
• Radial arm maze
• Spatial imagery
• Spatial learning
• Visual memory
• Visuospatial memory

[edit] References & Bibliography

[edit] Key texts

[edit] Books

[edit] Papers

• Olson, D.S. (1979) Mazes, maps and memory, American Psychologist 34: 583-96.

[edit] Additional material

[edit] Books

[edit] Papers

• Google Scholar

[edit] External links

---

This box: view • talk • edit

Memory
Types of memory
Auditory memory | Autobiographical memory | Collective memory | Early memories | Echoic Memory | Eidetic memory | Episodic memory | Explicit memory  |Exosomatic memory | False memory |Flashbulb memory | Iconic memory | Implicit memory | Institutional memory | Long term memory | Procedural memory | Prospective memory | Repressed memory | Retrospective memory | Semantic memory | Sensory memory | Short term memory | Spatial memory | State-dependent memory | Tonal memory | Transactive memory  | Verbal memory  | Visual memory  | Visuospatial memory  | Working memory  |
Aspects of memory
Childhood amnesia | Cryptomnesia |Cued recall | Eye-witness testimony | Memory and emotion | Forgetting |Forgetting curve | Free recall | Levels-of-processing effect | Memory consolidation |Memory decay | Memory distrust syndrome |Memory inhibition | Memory and smell | Memory loss | Memory optimization | Memory trace | Mnemonic | Memory biases  | Tip of the tongue | Lethologica | Priming | Primacy effect | Reconstruction | Proactive interference | Prompting | Recency effect | Recall (learning) | Recognition (learning) | Reminiscence | Retention | Retroactive interference | Serial position effect | Serial recall | Source amnesia |
Memory theory
Memory encoding | Baddeley | Memory-prediction framework | Memory consolidation | Forgetting | Recall | Recognition | Atkinson-Shiffrin | Interference theory | Memory-prediction framework | Dual-coding theory |Decay theory |
Mnemonics
Method of loci | Mnemonic room system | Mnemonic dominic system | Mnemonic link system |Mnemonic major system | Mnemonic peg system | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] |[[]] |
Neuroanatomy of memory
Amygdala | Hippocampus | prefrontal cortex  | Neurobiology of working memory | Neurophysiology of memory | Rhinal cortex | [[]] |[[]] |
Neurochemistry of memory
Glutamatergic system  | of short term memory | [[]] |[[]] | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] |[[]] |
Memory in clinical settings
Alcohol amnestic disorder | Amnesia | Dissociative fugue | False memory syndrome | False memory | Hyperthymesia | Memory and aging | Memory disorders | Repressed memory | Traumatic memory |
Assessment of memory
Benton | CAMPROMPT  MAS | MERMER | Rey-15 | Rivermead | TOMM | Wechsler | WMT |
Treating memory problems
CBT | EMDR | Psychotherapy | Recovered memory therapy |Reminiscence therapy | Memory clinic | Memory training | Rewind technique |
Prominant workers in memory|-
Baddeley | Broadbent |Ebbinghaus  | Kandel |McGaugh | Schacter  | Treisman | Tulving  |
Philosophy and historical views of memory
Aristotle | [[]] |[[]] |[[]] |[[]] | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] |
Miscellaneous
Journals | Learning, Memory, and Cognition |Journal of Memory and Language |Memory |Memory and Cognition | [[]] | [[]] | [[]] |

This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at Spatial memory. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Cite error: <ref> tags exist, but no <references/> tag was found