Chapter 12: Learning and Memory

Question 1

what is non-associative learning?

Answer 1

involves changes in the magnitude of responses to stimuli rather than the formation of connections between specific elements or events

Question 2

habituation vs sensitization

Answer 2

habituation: occurs when an organism reduces its response to unchanging, harmless stimuli
sensitization: occurs when repeated exposure to a strong stimulus increases response to other environmental stimuli

Question 3

what is classical conditioning?

Answer 3

when organisms learn that stimuli act as signals to predict the occurrence of other important events

Question 4

conditioned vs unconditioned responses, conditioned vs unconditioned stimulus

Answer 4

CR: behaviors that must be learned (salivating in response to the bell)
UCR: response that appears without prior experience to a stimulus (salivation in response to food)
CS: a stimulus that can eventually trigger a conditioned response (the ringing bell)
UCS: automatic response to a stimulus (food)

Question 5

what is operant conditioning?

Answer 5

when organisms form connections between a behavior and its consequences that impact the subsequent frequency of that behavior, reinforcing and punishing consequences increase and decrease likelihood of repeating the behavior

Question 6

what are the steps in the memory process?

Answer 6

encoding, consolidation, retrieval, and reconsolidation

Question 7

declarative vs nondeclarative memory

Answer 7

declarative: ability to actively recall semantic (facts of the world) or episodic (personal experiences) memories
nondeclarative: automatically performed without actively recalling a memory

Question 8

what does habituation look like in aplysia?

Answer 8

gill-withdrawal reflex, reduced activity at synapse between sensory and motor neurons, direct result of decreased neurotransmitter release

Question 9

what does sensitization look like in aplysia?

Answer 9

a stimulus gains the ability to influence more than one neural pathway, increased neurotransmitter release by
sensory neuron

Question 10

what does classical conditioning look like in aplysia?

Answer 10

sequential activation of sensory neurons by CS and UCS leads to greater neurotransmitter release

Question 11

what does operant conditioning look like in aplysia?

Answer 11

results when an organism’s naturally occurring behavior becomes more or less frequent in response to its
consequences, changes what had been a fairly
random pattern of behavior into a more reliable, stereotyped pattern

Question 12

what is consolidation?

Answer 12

occurs in the hippocampus, memories being solidified from short-term memory to long-term memory, storage and retrieval of explicit memories

Question 13

what is long-term potentiation?

Answer 13

a type of synaptic plasticity in which the application of a rapid series of electrical shocks to an input pathway
increases the postsynaptic potentials recorded in target neurons

Question 14

what are the two properties of long-term potentiation?

Answer 14

specificity: high activity produces LTP in synapses
that are active but not in neighboring synapses that are inactive
associativity: if a strong stimulus is applied to a strong synapse at the same time as the same weak stimulus is applied to a weak synapse both synapses are strengthened

Question 15

how does long-term potentiation work in spatial memory?

Answer 15

single-cell recordings taken while an animal freely
explores a new space provide insight into spatial map formation, single-cell recordings in rodents show that hippocampal spatial maps are formed within minutes of entering a new environment and remain stable for months

Question 16

how does working memory work?

Answer 16

during the initial, unstable phase following an LTP stimulus, additional GluA1 (AMPA) receptors are inserted into the postsynaptic membrane
in the later, more stable phase, the GluA2 receptors become more important
disrupting GluA1 receptor activity impairs working memory in rats

Question 17

what is the molecular mechanism of memory consolidation?

Answer 17

LTP causes transcription to start, cAMP response element binding protein (CREB) is a transcription factor that when disrupted could contribute to age-related declines in memory like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease

Question 18

what are reactivation and reconsolidation?

Answer 18

reactivation is bringing a memory back into your working memory and reconsolidation is re-storing it back into long-term storage

Question 19

what neural systems are involved in classical conditioning?

Answer 19

cerebellum is important in classical conditioning and receives input from the medulla and pons, purkinje cells influence the output of the cerebellum, learning will occur if the climbing-fiber and parallel-fiber synapsing onto a purkinje cell are activated at the same time, information about the CS travels to cerebellar cortex via mossy and parallel fibers, while information about UCS is provided by the climbing fibers

Question 20

what neural systems are involved in classical conditioning of fear?

Answer 20

sensory information about a conditioned stimulus (CS) converges on the lateral nucleus of the amygdala, output from the central nucleus of the amygdala results in defensive behaviors (CRs) such as freezing

Question 21

what is extinction?

Answer 21

conditioned responding will gradually decrease, or undergo extinction, when the CS is presented repeatedly without the UCS, extinction does not involve forgetting but rather represents new learning

Question 22

what part of the brain is important in episodic memory?

Answer 22

information about personal experiences takes place in the temporal lobe

Question 23

what is the delayed nonmatching to sample (DNMS) task?

Answer 23

standard test of memory in which the subject must identify the novel member of a stimulus pair following a delay, monkeys with medial temporal lobe damage appear to have difficulty forming new memories and subsequently perform poorly on the task

Question 24

what is semantic memory and where does it take place?

Answer 24

our basic knowledge of facts and language, widely distributed in the cortex, anterior temporal lobe appears to act as a “hub” serving semantic cognition

Question 25

what neural systems are involved in working memory?

Answer 25

dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) provide important attentional aspects of short-term memory, act as the “executive” of working memory, patients with prefrontal lesions can learn a sorting rule—for example, “put all the cards with the same-colored objects together”—but they can’t seem to adjust when the rule changes

Question 26

how does stress effect memory?

Answer 26

valence (positive or negative) and level of
arousal usually predict the vividness and strength of resulting memories for an event, epinephrine, norepinephrine, and cortisol
release in response to stress change how the brain processes memory, stress (usually resulting from trauma) can also impair memory formation (e.g., repressed memories)

Question 27

how does aging effect memory?

Answer 27

working memory functions, the ability to form new
episodic memories, and reaction time all typically
decline in healthy older adults, may be do to a deterioration of white matter, measures of cognitive ability in adults remain the same, this may be due to a reorganization of the brain that allows cognitive performance to remain stable in spite of age-related deficits in function

Question 28

how can MDMA influence PTSD?

Answer 28

MDMA stimulates release of monoamines, hormones,
and signaling molecules that modulate emotional
memory circuits engaged in reprocessing of traumatic
memories, may allow for reprocessing of traumatic
memories and emotional engagement with
therapeutic processes