94b - Learning and Memory

Question 1

Which schedule of partial reinforcement results in the fastest conditioning?

Which results in more reliable response rates?

Answer 1

• Fastest conditioning = fixed schedules
  
  • ​Fixed ratio
  • Fixed interval
• Most reliable response rates = variable schedules
  
  • Also more resistant to extinction
  • Variable ratio
  • Variable interval

Question 2

Which type of memory (explicit vs. implicit) is dependent on the hippocampus and limbic system?

What are the implications?

Answer 2

Explicit memory (declarative)

Ex: Facts, events, episodes, information

Damage to the limbic system = cannot form new memories of facts, events, episodes, or information

Question 3

Short term (aka working) memory depends on which parts of the brain?

Answer 3

Frontal and parietal lobes

Short term memory is important in executive functioning

Question 4

Which type of memory is dependent on the frontal and parietal lobes?

Answer 4

Short-term (aka working) memory

Question 5

Tau depositis in cell bodies and amyloid deposits in synapses characterize which neurodegenerative disease?

Answer 5

Alzheimer’s disease

Damage is often in the limbic system, resulting in impaired memory

Question 6

Which type of memory is retained through the basal ganglia and the cerebellum?

What are the implications?

Answer 6

Implicit memory (non-declarative)

Ex: skills, habits, motor skills, addiction

Somebody with a damaged hippocampus and/or limbic system will still remember how to do things and can learn new skills

Question 7

Which networks of the brain are involved in:

• Encoding new information:
• Retaining information:
• Retreiving information:

Answer 7

• Encoding new information: frontal networks
• Retaining information: limbic memory network (Papez)
  
  • ​Responsible for consolidating and storing newly encoded information
• Retreiving information: frontal and prefrontal networks

Question 8

Describe the process of memory consolidation

Which parts of the brain are important?

Answer 8

Lets say you’re looking at a banana

• The hippocampus unifies sensory and sensory association areas
  
  • Holds all of the info about the shape, color, and taste of the banana
• As time goes on, the prefrontal cortex becomes involved
  
  • Hippocampus transfers long-term banana info to the prefrontal cortex

This is why patients with hippocampal damage have anterograde amnesia; they cannot consolidate and store new memories, but the old memories are already stored in non-damaged areas