Chapter 8 - Neurobiological views of memory

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the understanding of the structural and process components of memory systems at the psychological and neurobiological levels. 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 levels. Most of the neurobiological models of memory postulate an organizational schema involving two or three systems, each supported by different neurobiological substrates and each mediated by different operating characteristics. These systems are labeled event-based, knowledge-based, and rule-based memory, locale versus taxon, working versus reference memory, declarative versus nondeclarative, and declarative versus procedural. However, memory is more complex and involves many neural systems in addition to the hippocampus. Hence, this chapter also discusses Kesner tripartite attribute-based theoretical model of memory to solve this issue. The model is organized into event-based, knowledge-based, and rule-based memory systems; and each system is composed of the same set of multiple attributes or forms of memory characterized by a set of process-oriented operating characteristics; and mapped onto multiple neural regions and interconnected neural circuits. .