I have always found biology and memory very fascinating, this could be because my Grandfather died of Alzheimer's and I always wanted to understand how the brain, this amazing organ, could fail on someone.
According to Lilienfeld, "The memory loss begins with recent events, with memories of the distant past being the last to go." This was the case for my grandfather. He realized that he was having difficulty at work and navigating around town and eventually he did not even recognize my mother. Lilienfeld also wrote, "These abnormalities (senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles) contribute to the loss of synapses and death of cells in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex." The fact that, early on, my grandfather had a lot of difficulty navigating could be due to death of cells in the hippocampus, which, according to Lilienfeld, "plays crucial roles in memory, especially spatial memory".
The horrible deterioration of my grandfather's memory was a mystery before taking PSY 1001 and I find it very beneficial to understand the disease that killed him.
*I was missing one point from each of biological psychology and memory so I am doing one post that brings the two subjects together! If you can only give me make-up points on one, that's okay.
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