Ch. 13 Biology Of Learning And Memory

Front 1

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov

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was a Russian physiologist known primarily for his work in classical conditioning

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Operant (or instrumental)
Conditioning

Back 2

Behavior is followed
by a reinforcement (which increases
the future probability of a response)
or punishment (suppresses the
frequency of a response).

Front 3

Engram

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Physical representation of
learning – Karl Lashley

Front 4

Karl Lashley's work on learning after cortical
lesions led him to propose two principles
about the nervous system

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Equipotentiality & Mass Action

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Equipotentiality

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All parts of the cortex
contribute equally to complex behaviors like
learning; any part of the cortex can substitute
for any other. All cortical areas can substitute
for each other as far as learning is concerned

Front 6

Mass action

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The cortex works as a whole, and
the more cortex the better. The reduction in
learning is proportional to the amount of tissue
destroyed, and the more complex the learning
task, the more disruptive lesions are.

Front 7

Richard F. Thompson located
an engram of memory in the

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cerebellum

Front 8

Lateral interpositus nucleus

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involved in motor
execution of distal muscles.
Damage to this area of the
cerebellum leads to permanent
loss of a classically conditioned
eye blink response in rabbits.

Front 9

Donald Hebb theory

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any memory that stayed in short-term storage long enough
would be gradually consolidated (strengthened) into a long-term memory.

Front 10

The brain produces a chemical to
interfere with consolidation called

Back 10

protein phosphatase 1. This chemical
declines when the experience is
repeated and allows for consolidation

Front 11

Reverberating circuit

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self-exciting positive loop

Front 12

flashbulb memory

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meaningful and emotional

Front 13

Both long- and short- term memory are composed of three processes

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encoding, storage, and retrieval

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reflexive memory

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relies on the cerebellum and amygdala

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formative memory

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on the hippocampus and temporal lobes

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working memory

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temporary sotrage of memories to which one is attending at the moment.

Front 17

3 components of working memory

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Phonological loop: Process which stores auditory information (including
words).
• Visuospatial sketchpad: Stores visual information.
• Central executive: Directs attention toward one stimulus or another and
determines what information will be stored in working memory. The ability
to shift attention between one task and another appears dependent on the
prefrontal cortex (PFC).

Front 18

Delayed-response task

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Memory task in which a subject is
given a signal to which it must give a learned response after a
delay. A common test for working memory.

Front 19

Damage to the
hippocampus produces a
powerful kind of

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amnesia

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retrograde amnesia

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(loss of
memory for events that occurred shortly before brain damage)

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severe anterograde amnesia

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(loss of long-term memories for
events that happened after brain damage) as a result of the
bilateral hippocampal removal.

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declarative memory

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(the ability to state a memory
in words)

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Episodic memory

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(ability to recall single personal
events)

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procedural memory

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(development of
motor skills, remembering or learning how to do things)

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implicit memory

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(the influence of recent
experience on behavior without realizing one is using memory)

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explicit memory

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(declarative memory; deliberate recall of
information that one recognizes as a memory

Front 27

Research of the function of the hippocampus suggests that it is:

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Critical for declarative memory functioning (especially episodic)
• Especially important for spatial memory
• Especially important for contextual learning (remembering the detail and context
of an event) and binding

Front 28

Delayed matching-to-sample task

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Task used to measure declarative memory
in animals. In this procedure animals see an object (the sample) and after a
delay get a choice between two objects, in which it must choose the one that
matches the sample.

Front 29

Delayed nonmatching-to-sample task:

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Similar to the above task except the
animal must choose the one that differs from the sample

Front 30

Radial Maze

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Maze with eight or more arms
used to test spatial memory in animals.
Damage to the hippocampus impairs
performance on this task.

Front 31

Morris search task:

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Procedure where an animal
has to find a hidden
platform usually under
murky water. This
procedure is used to task
spatial memory in animals
and like the radial maze
performance is negatively
impacted by hippocampal
damage.

Front 32

Configural Learning

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Procedure where the meaning of a stimulus
depends on what other stimuli are paired with it.

Front 33

Implicit learning or habit learning depends on the

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basal ganglia

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Korsakoff’s syndrome or Wernicke-Korsakoff’s syndrome

Back 34

Brain
damage caused by prolonged thiamine deficiency (Vitamin B1) (this
disorder is most commonly seen in chronic alcoholics). Thiamine
deficiency often leads to brain cell loss in the mammary bodies of the
hypothalamus and the dorsomedial nucleus of the thalamus, which
projects to the prefrontal cortex. Korsakoff’s patients have both
anterograde and retrograde amnesia.

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Priming

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Type of implicit memory.
Phenomenon that seeing or hearing words
temporarily increases one's probability of
using them. Like H. M, people with
Korsakoff’s syndrome have better implicit
than explicit memory.

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Confabulation

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Making up an answer to a
question and accepting the invented answer
as if it were true, taking guesses to fill in
gaps in memory. -- a common symptom of
Korsakoff’s syndrome).

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Alzheimer's disease:

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A dementia which becomes more
prevalent with advancing age

Front 38

People with Alzheimer’s disease have better

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procedural
than declarative memory and better implicit than
explicit memory.

Front 39

Hebbian synapse

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A Hebbian synapse occurs
when the successful stimulation of a cell by
an axon leads to the enhanced ability to
stimulate that cell in the future.

Front 40

Long-term potentiation (LTP):

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Increased responsiveness to axonal input
as a result of a previous period of rapidly repeated stimulation. LTP has
three properties that make it an attractive candidate for the cellular basis
of learning and memory:

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Cooperativity

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Nearly simultaneous
stimulation by two or more axons
produces LTP; stimulation by just
one axon produces it weakly.

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Associativity

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Associativity:Pairing a weak input
with a strong input enhances later
response to the weak input

Front 43

Long-term depression (LTD):

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A
prolonged decrease in response to
a synaptic input that has been
repeatedly paired with some other
input, generally at a low frequency
that occurs in the cerebellum and
hippocampus.

Front 44

All known cases of LTP
depend on changes at

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glutamate and GABA
primarily in the postsynaptic
neuron, especially the NMDA
and AMPA type of glutamate
receptors.

Front 45

Calcium enhances the responsiveness to glutamate by activating
a protein called

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CAMKII

Front 46

LTP causes presynaptic changes through the release of a

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retrograde
neurotransmitter from the postsynaptic cell

Front 47

Retrograde neurotransmitter changes include

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Decrease in action potential threshold
Increase neurotransmitter release
• Expansion of the axons.
• Transmitter release from additional sites.