Ch. 5-7 studies Flashcards
Damage to the visual cortex provides evidence for distinguishing between the ventral and dorsal streams of visual information in the brain.
Consider the case of D.F. (Goodale & Milner, 1992). At age 34, she suffered carbon monoxide poisoning that damaged her visual system. Regions involved in the “what” pathway were particularly damaged. D.F. was no longer able to recognize the faces of her friends and family members, common objects, or even drawings of squares or of circles. She could recognize people by their voices, however, and objects if they were placed in her hands.
Wolfram Shultz on dopamine neurons’ responses during conditioning
Found that more dopamine is released when a US is unexpected rather than expected. This then means that dopamine activity occurs with the occurrence of a CS rather than an US after conditioning, because the US is no longer unexpected if it proceeds a CS, while the CS remains unexpected.
Study on adverse stimuli and racial groups
Adverse stimuli were applied in small doses to participants, and paired with members of the participant’s racial group as well as not. It was found that participants more easily associated negative stimuli with people of other races rather than their own.
B.F. Skinner and Pigeons
Found that pigeons can become superstitions. Skinner fed pigeons at consistent 15 min. intervals and found that over time pigeons began repeating behavior about every 15 minutes in anticipation of the food, even though there was no indication the food was coming, and their behavior had no causal effect on the food coming or not.
Kandel and sea slugs
Kandel showed that alterations of the functioning of the synapse lead to habituation and sensitization. His research also demonstrated that long-term storage of information results from the development of new synaptic connections between neurons. This research supports that memory results from physical changes between neurons.
Demonstrating long term potentiation (LTP)
Researchers first establish that stimulating one neuron with a single electrical pulse leads to a certain amount of firing in a second neuron. Researchers then provide intense electrical stimulation to the first neuron. Lastly, researchers then administer a single electrical pulse to the first neuron again and measure the response of the second neuron. If LTP has occurred, then the intense electrical stimulation will have increased the liklihood that stimulating the first neuron produces firing of the second neuron.
Karl Lashley and engrams
Lashley spent much of his life trying to figure out which part of the brain memories are stored. Lashley’s term engram refers to the physical state of memory storage. Lashley trained rats to run in a maze, then removed different areas of their cortices. In testing how much of the maze the rats retained, Lashley found that the size of the removed portion was the most important for predicting retention and that the location of the area was far less important.
Evidence that long term memory and working memory are separate systems
Research that required participants to recall a long list of words. The ability to recall items from the list depended on the order of presentation. Items presented early or late in this list were remembered better than those presented in the middle, which is known as the serial position effect.
The case of H.M. Long term memory vs. short term memory
H.M. (guy who had part of his brain removed) couldn’t form new memories, but could still recall old ones. Also, his working memory functioned perfectly normally; he could keep track of a conversation as long as he stayed actively involved in it. The only thing that was not working was the transfer from the working memory to the long term memory.
