Chapter 12 Flashcards
Gestational age (GA)
Time since conception
Habituation
Decrease in the strength or occurrence of behavior after repeated exposure to that stimulus that produces that behavior. Can be used to test sound learning
Noise from outside can be heard in the _[__
Uterus
How many weeks of gestational age when the fetus’s brain and sense organs are developed to start learning and perceiving sounds
25 weeks
Detal exposure to mother’s language ptterns may help fetus’ brain start to encode..?
Language relevant speech words
1 to 2 years old?
4 to 5 years old?
Master the basics of language
Master complex grammar and reading
Delay conditioning paradigm?
CS and US overlap and coterminate
Trace conditioning paradigm?
Gap between the end of the CS and arrival of the US
Elicited imitation?
Infants are shown an action and tested for their ability to mimic this action later
What do babies do in the first few months?
Imitate the speech sounds they hear around them
Why does factual recall increase with age?
Because episodic memory in young children develops more slowly
Intra experimental error?
Correctly recalled having learned the fact during the experiment but simply confused whether it was from a human or puppet
Extra experimental error
Mistakenly recalled having learned the fact somewhere outside the experiment
8 year old rarely make ____ experimental errors, but often make ____ experimental errors
Extra, intra
Young children often make ____ experimental errors
Extra
Children can be as young as _ to learn semantic information
4
Children age - can recall both the fact and the spatial and temporal context at which the learning was acquired
6, 8
____ and ____ are immature in humans at birth and continue to develop during the first few years of life.
Hippocampus, prefrontal cortex
Children older than __ months show mirror recognition behavior
24
Carolyn Rovee Collier
Very young children can do and form episodic memories. When infants are asked to display their memory of recent events by actions rather than verbal recall, they often perform well
Sensitive period
A time window, usually early in life, during which a certain kind of learning is most effective
Imprinting
The tendency of young animals of some species to form an attachment to the first individual they see after birth
Critical period
A limited Time window during which learning was possible and irreversible
Imprinting is fastest and most effective at what period?
The sensitive period
Neurogenesis
Process of neuronal birth
By 25 weeks, majority of human fetus’s neurons are…?
In place
How do we explain eye blink conditioning in young infants?
Purkinje cells in the cerebellum are one class of neurons that forms early in gestation: helps explain why it is possible
Apoptosis
Natural cell death
Neurotropic factors
Compounds that help neurons grow and thrive
Synaptogenesis
Creation of new synapses
When does synaptogenesis begin?
5 months after conception
After birth, how many synapses are created per second with synaptogenesis?
40 thousand
Human adult brain has how many synapses?
10^14
Spines
Tiny protrusions from dendrites
Vast majority of synapses on cortical neurons occur on ____
Spines
If the spines are contacted by another neuron, what happens?
Synapses are strengthened
What happens to unneeded spines?
They dissapear
Number of synapses peak around ages __ to __
11, 15
Neuronal axons develop _____
Myelin sheaths
Myelin sheaths
Fatty substances that insulates electrical signals traveling down the axon, speeding up the neuronal transition
What are myelin sheaths produced by?
Glia
Myelination doesn’t start until?
After birth
Can neurons function before myelination is complete?
Yes, but it will be slow and weak
Why does working memory fully mature later on?
Because frontal cortex isn’t myelination until late adolescence or adulthood
Why are teens impulsive and risk taking?
Because there is an increase in dopamine in prefrontal cortex
Do all sex hormone effects occur at puberty?
No
Woman have larger…? Men have larger?
Lateral frontal cortex (better working memory) and hippocampus (better episodic memory)
Angular gyrus and visual cortex (better at spatial navigation)
Women taking birth control show better ____ conditioning
Classical
Testosterone ____ estrogen function
Inhibits
What happens when testosterone levels are too high?
They are converted to estrogen
Brain ____ occurs with old age
Shrinkage
What happens with neurons in the prefrontal cortex with age?
They are lost
What happens with neurons in cerebellum with age?
They are lost
Barnes old rat study
Rats were placed in maze and hippocampal neurons fired accordingly to their location
In session two, neurons fired in same place as session 1
When older rat returned for session 2, neurons did not always fire at the same place
Suggests both young rat and old rat learn about their environment in session one, but old ratlost this info much faster than young rat
Down syndrome occurs in 1 of ___ births
700
Facial appearance of downs?
Flattened skull and nose
Average lifespan for downs?
49 years
What do people with downs have an extra copy of?
Chromosome 21 (trisomy 21)
The ___ the mother, the higher chance of downs
Older
Key brain areas small by adolescence in downs?
Hippocampus, frontal cortex and cerebellum
Downs children suffer with recalling recent ___ events
Episodic
People with downs become even more cognitively impaired because?
They don’t sleep well
Children with downs show…?
Delayed speech and language skills development
What age does difference in brain size between downs and normal show?
6 months
Brains of people with downs appear ____ at birth but soon after appear visibly smaller
Normal
Learning and memory may be normal or close to normal at a very ____ stage
Early
Why do downs people have impaired recall of episodic events?
Small hippocampal volume
Alzhimers disease?
Form of dementia due to accumulating brain pathology
Earliest symptoms of alzhiemers?
Episodic memory disruptions
What happens in late stage alzhiemers?
Personality change, disorientation, loss of judgement, confusion, loss of speech, inability to perform daily activities
Alzhiemers is defined by what two pathalogies in the brain
Amyloid plaques and neurofrillary tangles
Amyloid plaque
Deposits of beta amyloid, which is an abnormal by product of a common protein called amyloid precursor protein, they accumulate in the brain and can be toxic
Neurofrillary tangles
Collapsed wreckage of proteins that normally function as scaffolding to hold a neuron in place and ghat help ferry nutrients around a cell
What happens when plaques and tangles accumulate in the brain?
Synapse loss and neuron death on a large scale, and shrinkage of hippocampus
