Antonova (2011)

Question 1

Aim

Answer 1

To investigate the effects of scopolamine on hippocampal activity in the formation and consolidation of spatial memories.

Question 2

Participants

Answer 2

20 healthy male adults, mean age 28 years old

Question 3

Method

Answer 3

• Injected with scopolamine or a placebo 70-90 minutes before task
• Put into an fMRI
• Scanned while playing the ‘Arena Task’, a virtual reality game
• Goal: to navigate around an ‘arena’ with the goal of reaching a pole. After the pole was located, the screen would go blank for 30 seconds, in which they actively rehearsed how to get to the pole, and when the screen reappeared, they were in a different starting point.
• Measured for 6 trials, and the again 3-4 weeks later (repeated measures).

Question 4

Results

Answer 4

• When participants were injected with scopolamine, they demonstrated a significant reduction in the activation of the hippocampus compared to when they received a placebo.

Question 5

Conclusion

Answer 5

• Reduced acetylcholine lead to reduced activity in hippocampus during spatial memory tasks, suggesting acetylcholine could play a role in the encoding and retrieval of spatial memories in humans

Question 6

Evaluation

Answer 6

• Higher rate of error in the scopolamine group but not a significant difference
• Difference in the activity in the hippocampus is significant
• Means that the task as designed may not have been the best for showing performance differences; without the use of the fMRI, there would be no way to know that at the biological level there were significant differences in the two conditions
• Study was a repeated measures design - eliminating the effect of participant variability
• Counter-balanced- controlled for practice effect
• Carried out blindly; this controls for researcher bias
• During the debriefing, several of the participants expressed that they had felt stressed, either as a result of the injection of an unfamiliar drug or being in the fMRI enclosure. This could have an effect on the working of the hippocampus as we know that stress may interfere with memory encoding
• Small sample size, results need to be replicated