JSS PUBLIC SCHOOL

(SENIOR SECONDARY)
(Affiliated to CBSE, New Delhi)
HSR LAYOUT BENGALURU-102

BIOLOGY INVESTIGATORY PROJECT

2024-2025
Topic: Memory and Emotions

Submitted By: Rebha

Submitted To: Mrs. Pramila
Biology department
Reg.No.
 JSS PUBLIC SCHOOL
(SENIOR SECONDARY)
(Affiliated to CBSE, New Delhi)
HSR LAYOUT BENGALURU-102
CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that Rebha, a student of class XII B has
successfully completed the investigatory project on ________
during the year 2024-2025 in partial fulfilment of Chemistry
practical examination conducted by AISSCE, New Delhi.

Register Number:
Signature of the Principal:
Date of practical examination:
School Seal:
Signature of the External Examiner:
Signature of the Internal Examiner:
 Memory

Introduction
Memories are not passive or literal recording of reality but our
recreation of specific events which become distorted and loose
accuracy over time. They are involved distortions of reality then
factual snapshot or videos. We often recall occurrences that make
general sense of our expectations of what should happen but they’re
not actually a part of the event. Once experience is encoded by brain
network involving multiple cerebral structures. No single anatomical
structure can deal with memory function alone. Memories are
encoded by brain networks whose connections have been shaped by
previous encounters. Pre-existing structures powerfully encode and
store new memory and influences what and why a person will
remember a certain thing. Memories having strong emotional
significance appear to be more readily remembered. This may
happen due to the function of Hippocampus and Amygdala which
plays an important role in the storage of long term memory having
strong emotional component.
 Types of Memory

1. Short Term Memory (STM): It is the ability to remember

events encountered less than an hour ago.
a. Working memory: It is a subcomponent of short
term memory it involves moment to moment
awareness. It plays role in search and retrieval of
archived information.

2. Long term memory (LTM): It is the ability to remember

events encountered more than several hours ago.
a. Recent memory: It is a component of long term
memory it is the ability to recall information or an
event that occurred hours to weeks ago.
b. Remote memory: It is a component of LTM which
helps us recall distant past events which exceeds
more than weeks ago.

3. Semantic Memory: It involves the recall of facts,

important dates and names of places and definition of
words and how to use the rules of grammar.

4. Episodic memory: It involves the recall of important

events in an individual’s life like birthday, first day of
school an anniversary etc.

5. Procedural memory: It involves the recall of steps

involved in completing a specific task. Examples include
 remembering the steps to make a coffee or steps to
change a tyre.

6. Explicit memory: It involves knowledge an individual

consciously knows he or she has acquired. For example
an individual’s knowledge about organic chemistry.

7. Implicit memory: It involves knowledge that the

individual does not consciously know he or she had
acquired. Example: One with amnesia may not know
that one has acquired knowledge to play the piano but
can play it fluently.

8. Source memory: It involves the recall of how

information is learned. For example learning a sequence
due to mnemonic.
Often people remember facts but they do not know how
they learn them. For example if a lawyer over rehearsed
a witness, the witness may confuse the rehearsed
information with the events that were actually
observed.

9. Perceptual memory: It is classified on identification by

sensation or perception by an individual.
a. Visual memory: It is the ability to accurately
identify objects and people by recalling their visual
characters.
b. Olfactory memory: It is the ability to identify
objects by their olfactory characters – smell.
 c. Gustatory memory: It is the ability to identify
objects by their gustatory characters - taste.
d. Somatosensory memory: It is the ability to identify
an object by somatosensory characteristics – by
touch.
e. Auditory memory: It is the ability to identify an
object by or a person by their auditory characters-
by sound produced.

Field memory vs Observer Memory

Field memory an observer memory refers to the person’s

own perspective of himself or herself within the remembered
event.

A. Field memory: In this perspective of memory, people do

not see themselves in the memory. They often
remember as though the individual is seeing through his
or her own eyes.

B. Observer memory in this type of memory the person

incorporates his or her image in the remembered event.
The individual has now altered the original scene
because the original perspective of an event is always
viewed in field perspective. The person now visualise
themselves in the event.

Usually recent memories are remembered from field

perspective while older memories are remembered from an
observer perspective this is a phenomenon of time.
 Encoding process
The encoding process involves actual steps that the brain
uses to turn an event into a stored memory. Items in the
short term memory can be remembered for a second unless
encoded and stored. Encoding information involves moving
information from short term memory to long term memory.
The process must involve information of neural circuits that
can be easily accessed in order to retrieve stored
information. Otherwise the newly learned information
cannot be stored.

Being able to retrieve information involves a subcomponent

of short term memory called working memory. Long term
memory is brain’s archival system. It is a collaborative
function of hippocampus and cortical areas.
 Damage to frontal lobe region and
encoding problems.

Patients who have sustained damage to frontal lobe have

encoded problems as they cannot move information from
short term memory to long term memory. They failed to
organise and categorise new information as it comes to the
short term memory. The problem lies in the process of
working memory and not long term memory’s storage. Long
term memory established prior to damage can be easily
retrieved but cannot remember events occurred in the past
24 hours as events cannot be moved from short term
memory to long term memory.

Long term memory may remain intact in brain injury because

of neurogenesis in the hippocampus. Neurogenesis is the
birth of new brain cells. Patients with damage in the frontal
node lose ability to encode new memories.
 Reconstruction of memory

Reconstruction of past memories involve a series of neural

pathways and structures and has many anatomical
contributions. We construct memories similar to a jigsaw
puzzle. Pieces of memories are reconstructed until we have
enough to remember an event. Fragments may be left out
and other pieces may be inaccurately borrowed from similar
memories and confused with the event we are attempting to
recall. Perceptual record of memory the perceptual region of
brain concerned with sight and sound merge with a posterior
multimodal association area.
 Emotions

Major Neuro-anatomical Structures Involved in

Regulating Emotions
Primary structures: These include three frontal cortex (Left
hemisphere and right hemisphere) Another limbic
system(Amygdala hippocampus cingulate gyrus).

Secondary structures: These include the Thalamus, the

anterior insular region of the temporal lobe and Septum
Pellusidum.
The regions of the brain collaboratively work in order to
regulate emotional changes of an individual. They play a very
crucial role in an individual’s emotional condition.
 Roles of the left hemisphere and right
hemisphere in emotion

Both the hemispheres act in mutual cross modulator

relationship. Each hemisphere keeps the other’s innate
emotional response in check. These hemispheres are
specialised for processing different types of emotions.
Stimulation of an area shows increased electrical activity in
that area.
Left prefrontal area coincides with positive emotions and
sense of well-being. Stimulation of left prefrontal area
appears to enhance one’s mood.
Right prefrontal area coincides with emotions of agitation,
nervousness, distress, anxiety, sadness and depression.
Stimulation of this area produces depressed moods in
individuals.
People who are at one time depressed (and didn’t report
these emotions in present) show decreased left prefrontal
lobe activity when compared to people who haven’t
experienced depression. This supports Kramer’s Kindling
theory of depression- each depressive episode produces
permanent changes in the brain’s structure and chemical
balance.
When brain damage occurs to one hemisphere the other
hemisphere assumes control of the emotional regulation of
the individual. If the left hemisphere is damaged, the patient
tends to be depressed and emotionally liable. If the right
hemisphere is damaged the patient tends to optimistically
deny their disability. In absence of pathology, it appears that
the left hemisphere takes control and regulate emotional
response of both the hemispheres.
 Damages to the Brain and Its Consequences

The left hemisphere balances a person’s emotional

equanimity so that under normal conditions, the right brain’s
propensity towards depression does not take over. In
patients with chronic depression the left brain’s ability to
mitigate right brain’s emotional negativity decreases with
each depressive episode. Occupational therapy that provides
depressed patients with activities that stimulate the left brain
function may be an effective treatment for depression.

1. Damage to the orbitofrontal lobe legion

Patients with damage in the orbit of frontal lobe legion

experience exhibit poor judgement, risk taking
behaviour, rowdiness and socially inappropriate
behaviours. They exhibit impulsiveness and
disinhibition. They become easily irritated agitated
aggressive and angry.

2. Damage to the dorsolateral front lobe legion

Patients with damaged dorsolateral frontal lobe legion

exhibit decreased drive and motivation, lethargy and
flat effect and rarely initiate activities or display
emotions.
 Amygdala’s role in emotion

Amygdala is a part of the pleasure centre of the brain.

Amidala is designed to alert the cortex to threatening
situations and danger. People with legions in Amygdala do
not experience pleasure from people and activities they
enjoyed or liked. They do not experience fear. They often
engage in risk taking activities and do not recognise the sense
of fear in others. Amygdala works corporately with the
anterior cingulate gyrus prefrontal lobe regions and right
hemisphere to assess if a situation is dangerous.
The anterior insula region, Amygdala and the Hippocampus
appears to be involved in attaching emotional significance to
thought and memories. Individuals with autism have
impairment with limbic structures particularly the amygdala
as they have the inability to interpret social cues and
generate appropriate emotional response.
In patients with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) the
amygdala becomes highly activated or overactive. People
with PTSD report feelings that the traumatic event is vividly
occurring all over again - as though the limbic system is
flooding the visual auditory somatosensory cortices with
painful memories. Language area of the brain shuts down
during PTSD and hence cannot transfer their emotion
regarding the event into words. Without the ability to use
language to describe their emotions they cannot integrate
the right hemisphere’s response to the event with the left
hemisphere’s ability to cognitively analyse the event and
hence the experience invade once consciousness without
modulation from the left hemisphere.
Treatment for PTSD is to mitigate flooding experience and
help the individual use cognitive and emotional strategies to
subdue PTSD when it occurs.

The Septal Area and Anger

The role of the septal area is to provide a means of
communication between the limbic structure and
diencephalon. When one experiences anger, there is a
heightened activity in the septal area. A lesion to the septal
area in animals produce rage and hyper emotionality. In
humans destruction of the septal area gives rise to emotional
overreactions to stimuli in the environment.
 Differences in Neurological Substrates of
Emotions between Males and Females

When females feel sadness, they experience greater activity

in the anterior limbic system than males. According to some
research studies, females tend to experience profound
sadness when compared to males. This supports the research
finding that females experience twice the risk of depression
than males. Females activate both sides of the hemisphere
while experiencing emotions. Hence they are more able to
describe their emotions. Integration between the
hemispheres facilitates association between words and
emotions. Females are more aware of their emotions than
males. Males do not readily integrate both hemispheres
while experiencing certain emotions. This may predispose
males to greater difficulty attaching words to their emotions.