Autobiographical Memory

Autobiographical events refer to memories of personally experienced events.

Episodic autobiographical memory (EAM): Provides information of your personal experience of the event

Allows individuals to construct future possible scenarios that include subjective elements and more detailed elements like emotional reactions

e.g. remembering dancing at your formal and remembering how happy you felt.

Semantic autobiographical memory (SAM): Provides information about general knowledge/facts of the event

Allows individuals to construct possible scenarios that are consistent with what they already know about the world.

e.g. the date, location or the colour of your dress/suit

Possible imagined futures: refer to hypothetical experiences and situations that an individual has the ability to create and conceptualise in their mind.

Alzheimer’s disease a neurodegenerative disease that involves the progressive loss of neurons in the brain and is characterised by memory decline



Some symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease include:

•  - decrease in cognitive functions - ability to plan, problem-solve, and think logically.
• - personality change.
• - changes in mood and emotion.
• - frequently becoming confused or disoriented.
• - difficulty with language and communication.

Amyloid plaques: fragments of the protein beta-amyloid that accumulate around neurons into insoluble plaques that inhibit communication between neurons.

Neurofibrillary tangles: an accumulation of the protein tau that forms insoluble tangles within neurons, which then inhibit the transportation of essential substances and eventually kill the neuron entirely.

Aphantasia: a phenomenon in which individuals lack the capacity to generate mental imagery