PSY 340 Week 5 Learning, Memory, Emotion and Disorders Example

She Still Plays the Piano: Learning, Memory and Emotion in Early-Onset Alzheimer's Disease

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSY/340: Biological Foundations in Psychology

Week 5 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The person described is a composite written for a model paper; research findings come from the sources listed.

Learning and memory allow experience to change behavior, and emotion shapes what is remembered. Both depend on changes in synapses and on specific brain structures. This closing paper explains those mechanisms and uses a case of early-onset Alzheimer's disease to show how a disorder can damage some memory systems while sparing others.

The Case

Diane is fifty-eight and managed a bank branch in Scottsdale, Arizona, until two years ago. At fifty-five she began missing meetings, asking colleagues the same questions twice in an afternoon and losing track of conversations. Now she cannot recall what she ate for lunch or that her son visited the day before. Yet she plays the piano pieces she learned as a child without a mistake, remembers her daughter's wedding in rich detail and can still make her signature pie from memory. Testing and imaging led to a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

A Classic Case: The Hippocampus and New Memories

Scoville and Milner (1957) reported on a patient whose medial temporal lobes, including large portions of both hippocampi, were surgically removed to control severe epilepsy. After surgery, he could no longer form new lasting memories of events and facts, though his intelligence, his memories from well before the surgery and his ability to hold information briefly in mind were largely intact. Later studies showed he could still learn new motor skills, such as tracing a figure in a mirror, improving each day while denying he had ever done the task.

The case showed that the hippocampus is critical for forming new declarative memories, memories of facts and events that can be consciously recalled, and that other kinds of memory rely on different systems.

Memory Systems

Declarative memory includes episodic memory for personal events and semantic memory for facts, both depending on the hippocampus and surrounding cortex during formation and consolidation. Over time, many memories become less dependent on the hippocampus as they are stored across the cortex. Nondeclarative memory includes procedural skills and habits, supported by the basal ganglia, cerebellum and motor cortex; classical conditioning; and priming.

Diane's pattern fits this division. Her failure to remember lunch or her son's visit reflects damage to the hippocampus, impairing new episodic memories. Her piano playing and pie recipe rely on procedural memory, supported by circuits that Alzheimer's disease affects later. Her well-rehearsed older memories, stored widely across the cortex, have so far survived better than recent ones.

Learning at the Synapse

Bliss and Lømo (1973) stimulated a pathway into the hippocampus of anesthetized rabbits with brief high-frequency bursts and found that the response of receiving neurons increased and stayed elevated for hours, in some animals for days. This long-term potentiation showed that synapses can be strengthened lastingly by activity, offering a cellular mechanism for learning. Later research linked it to glutamate receptors that allow calcium into the receiving cell when both sending and receiving neurons are active, triggering changes that add receptors and strengthen the connection.

Diane cannot say where she was this morning, but her fingers find every note of a song she learned at eight.

Emotion and the Amygdala

The amygdala, a cluster of nuclei near the hippocampus, evaluates the emotional significance of events and coordinates responses such as fear. McGaugh (2004) reviewed evidence that emotional arousal, through stress hormones and noradrenaline acting on the amygdala, strengthens the consolidation of memories in the hippocampus and other regions. This explains why emotionally significant events are often remembered more vividly and durably than neutral ones.

Diane's vivid memory of her daughter's wedding reflects both its emotional weight and the many times she has retold it. People with Alzheimer's disease often retain emotional reactions even when they cannot recall the events behind them: Diane may forget a pleasant visit but remain in a good mood for hours afterward.

The Biology of Alzheimer's Disease

Scheltens et al. (2021) reviewed Alzheimer's disease as a progressive neurodegenerative disorder marked by plaques of amyloid-beta outside neurons and tangles of tau protein inside them, along with inflammation, loss of synapses and neuron death. Changes typically begin years before symptoms, often first in the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus, which explains why recent memory is usually affected first. As the disease spreads, it affects language, reasoning, spatial skills and behavior. Early-onset forms, before age sixty-five, account for a minority of cases; some are linked to specific genes, and the APOE e4 variant raises risk for later-onset forms.

Connecting the Course

Diane's case draws on every earlier topic. Neurons and synapses, from the first week, are lost and weakened. Structural imaging, from the second, shows shrinkage of her hippocampus, and newer scans can detect amyloid. Her motor skills, from the third, remain intact for now. Sleep, from the fourth, is often disrupted in Alzheimer's disease, and poor sleep may in turn worsen the buildup of amyloid.

How the Diagnosis Was Made

Diane's neurologist combined several kinds of evidence. Memory tests showed that she could repeat a word list immediately but recalled almost none of it twenty minutes later, the signature of a problem forming new memories rather than paying attention. An MRI showed shrinkage of the hippocampus beyond what is typical for her age, and a spinal fluid test found low amyloid-beta and high tau, the pattern expected in Alzheimer's disease.

Care and Quality of Life

Current treatment includes medications that boost acetylcholine signaling and, for some patients in early stages, newer antibody therapies that reduce amyloid and modestly slow decline, with risks that require careful monitoring. Nondrug approaches matter as much: routines, memory aids, physical activity and social contact. Diane's family uses a large calendar and labeled photographs, and she plays piano at a weekly program for people with dementia, a strength that brings her pride and connection. Her husband attends a caregiver support group.

Conclusion

Diane's case shows that memory is not one system. Hippocampal damage impairs new declarative memories, as the classic surgical case first showed, while procedural skills survive in other circuits. Long-term potentiation explains how synapses store learning, the amygdala explains why emotional memories endure and the spread of amyloid and tau from memory regions outward explains the course of her disease.

References

Bliss, T. V. P., & Lømo, T. (1973). Long-lasting potentiation of synaptic transmission in the dentate area of the anaesthetized rabbit following stimulation of the perforant path. The Journal of Physiology, 232(2), 331-356. https://doi.org/10.1113/jphysiol.1973.sp010273

McGaugh, J. L. (2004). The amygdala modulates the consolidation of memories of emotionally arousing experiences. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27, 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.27.070203.144157

Scheltens, P., De Strooper, B., Kivipelto, M., Holstege, H., Chételat, G., Teunissen, C. E., Cummings, J., & van der Flier, W. M. (2021). Alzheimer's disease. The Lancet, 397(10284), 1577-1590. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32205-4

Scoville, W. B., & Milner, B. (1957). Loss of recent memory after bilateral hippocampal lesions. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 20(1), 11-21. https://doi.org/10.1136/jnnp.20.1.11