- Hello, psychology students. For the next topic, we're going to think a little bit about the different brain structures that are involved in memory. So this is going to be a really quick video where I just show you some of the key players, the most important parts of the brain that we need to be thinking about. 

So you can see here, we've got a whole brain with its characteristic convoluted sort of wrinkly outer layer. And that's actually where we're going to start, with the cerebral cortex. Because remember, this outer layer of the brain, this wrinkly mess all over it, is called the cerebral cortex. If you peel it off, it's about-- I think it's about 50 centimeters by 50 centimeters. So it's-- I don't know. 

I don't fit on the webcam, but about the size of your textbook opened all the way. And it has a disproportionate number of neurons. It's a really neuron packed part of your brain. And this is where our long-term memories are stored, particularly-- no, actually, sorry, all-- all of our different types of long-term memory, it's believed, are stored in different parts of the cerebral cortex. Some in the frontal lobe, some in the temporal lobe down here and so on, but all of them in the cerebral cortex. So cerebral cortex, storage of long-term memories. That's the key idea for that one. 

We're going to switch now to have a look at the hippocampus. The hippocampus, it says here, "Greek for seahorse." Apparently, this looks like a seahorse. I can't quite see that, but I guess I'm not all that familiar with seahorses. So you can see this sort of funny little sliver here, sort of deep in the middle of the brain. 

It's in the medial temporal lobe just under the surface of the cerebral cortex, but you can see, it's sort of right in the sort of center of the brain. And so, that's involved not in storing long-term memories, which is a common mistake that people make, but it does-- sorry, it does temporarily store them, but for a very short period of time during consolidation and processing. 

So memories-- when you're forming a new memory, it first goes here to the hippocampus for maybe, they think, 20 minutes, maybe half an hour, while it's being consolidated. And then it gets transferred out to the outer layer, to the cerebral cortex for long-term storage. 

Now, it's not directly involved in implicit memories. That's procedural and classically conditioned memories. It's particularly involved in explicit memories, the encoding and sending off for storage of explicit memories. So that's the temporal lobe. 

Now, I'm going to try and point it out. It's a little bit hard to see because of the way this does it, but see how there's this sort of circular or spherical structure just at the front of it? I'm going to swap now to show you that, the amygdala. 

So keep your eye on the hippocampus. That's that sliver there. And we're going to switch now to look at the amygdala. There it is. See? That semi sort of spherical shape just in front of the hippocampus. Now, the amygdala, we've actually learnt about a couple of times before. 

The amygdala, you may recall, is involved in the fight-flight-freeze response. It triggers the release of adrenaline and stuff like that. So the amygdala, again, doesn't store any type of memory. But what it does do is it signals to the hippocampus over here when memories are emotionally significant. 

So you can imagine you're aroused. You might have the fight-flight-freeze response. You're emotionally aroused in some way. That means the amygdala is active, and it tells its buddy, the hippocampus right next to it, hey, this is significant. This memory matters, so make sure you encode it really well. 

So that's the amygdala's role in all this. It tells the hippocampus, this one's important, store it or encode it well, send it off for storage, encode it well. The last part of the brain that we're going to think about is right back here. So we'll swap now to the-- I always get it wrong-- cerebellum, not the cerebrum, the cerebellum. 

And that's this sort of weird, wrinkly thing at the rear-- at the base of the brain here, right above the brain stem. So you can see, there's the spine. And it's right next to that. So if you remember-- you might remember that the cerebellum is involved with movement. 

So when we-- I don't know what else to say. It's involved with movement. When we move, the cerebellum is really important there. Therefore, you can work out that it's probably got something to do with procedural memories. Now they think it doesn't store procedural memories long term. It's-- they're still in the cerebral cortex. 

But it is-- does temporarily store them. These are well-learned motor responses, so things like my-- if I learnt tennis and I was practicing that skill, I would carry out that skill using the cerebellum. But I would actually then encode it and store it into the cerebral cortex, the wrinkly outer layer. 

So this-- I guess it's sort of similar to the hippocampus, but particularly for procedural memories. However, they do think that it stores simple conditioned reflexes, so things like hearing, classically conditioned memories. So in the textbook, there's an experiment where you blow in someone-- sound a bell and blow in someone's eye and they blink. Sound a bell, blow in their eye until you learn that association. That blinking is actually stored in the cerebellum. 

So classically conditioned involuntary reflexes would actually be stored in the cerebellum. So that's the four-- the cerebral cortex, which stores all our long-term memories, the hippocampus, which encodes and sends for-- sends for storage in the cerebral cortex, the hippocampus, which does it for explicit memories, the amygdala, which works alongside the hippocampus and says, this is emotionally significant, store it well, and therefore is particularly involved in procedural-- in classically conditioned memories like fear responses and things like that. 

And finally, the cerebellum, which has to do with movement. It helps us to encode, or it help-- it sort of temporarily stores motor responses, procedural memories, and it does store-- long-term, stores simple conditioned reflexes. 

I hope that helped it. I hope that helped you getting to see it. It's your job now to memorize it a bit better and get the full picture of what each one does. But hopefully just getting to see it once will help you with that. OK, good luck learning about the different brain regions and how they're involved in memory.