Memory: Organization of Brain Systems and Cognition
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Excerpt
Cognitive neuroscience is that part of the brain sciences concerned with the functional organization and neural substrates of higher cortical functions, e.g., perception, attention, language, memory, problem solving, and the organization of action. Among these diverse topics, the topic of memory has been a particularly fruitful target of experimental inquiry. Work on memory is currently benefiting from approaches at many levels of analysis, from studies of cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying synaptic plasticity to studies of brain systems and behavior. Cellular and molecular approaches address questions about how neurons exhibit history-dependent activity. Systems-level questions address a more global level of analysis: How is memory organized? Is there one kind of memory or many? Where are memories stored? What are the structures and connections involved in memory and what jobs do they do?
One useful strategy for asking systems-level questions about memory is to study instances of relatively selective memory impairment....
