Chapter 18 - Learning and Memory Flashcards
What’s an engram?
- A physical trace that can be found within the brain
- Usually the case with the impact of memory on the brain
Anterograde vs. retrograde amnesia?
- Anterograde amnesia - patient unable to form new memories
- Retrograde amnesia - inability to access old memories. This may be incomplete with older memories being acceptable and more recent memories are not.
What are the two major classical training paradigms for learning and memory?
1) Pavlovian conditioning (classical conditioning) (Ivan Pavlov)
2) Operant conditioning (instrumental conditioning) (Edward Thorndike)
What’s Pavlovian conditioning?
- Learning achieved when a neutral stimulus elicits a response due to repeated pairing with some event
Components involve: - Unconditioned stimulus (UCS) - naturally and automatically triggers an unconditioned response
- Unconditioned response (UCR) - Unlearned, naturally occurring.
- Conditioned stimulus (CS) - an originally neutral stimulus that becomes associated with an UCS to elicit a CR
- Conditioned response (CR) - the learned response to a formerly neutral CS
Provide an example of Pavlovian conditioning.
- Ex. Eyeblink conditioning using air puff
- UCS = air puff
- UCR = eyeblink to air puff
- CS = tone
- CR = eyeblink to tone
What’s operant conditioning?
- A learning procedure in which the consequences (i.e., obtaining a reward) of a particular behaviour (i.e., pressing a bar) increase of decrease the probability of the behaviour occurring again.
- Edward Thorndike’s idea
What’s an example of operant conditioning?
- A cat is placed in a box with the food reward outside
- The hungry cat eventually learns that pressing on the lever will result in getting out of the box and getting to the food.
- Faster trials of this signify faster learning
What are the 2 main categories of learning?
- Implicit - subjects demonstrate knowledge, such as a skill, conditioned response, or recalling events on prompting, but cannot explicitly retrieve the info (i.e., unconscious)
- Explicit - Subjects can retrieve an item and indicate that they know they retrieved the correct item (conscious)
T/F: Classical conditioning is unconscious.
- TRUE
Non-declarative vs. Declarative memory?
- Non-declarative - implicit memory
- Declarative - explicit memory
What are the different types of implicit memory?
- Procedural memory - the ability to recall a movement sequence or how to perform some act or behaviour
- Priming - using a stimulus to sensitize the nervous system to a later presentation of the same or similar stimulus
- Pavlovian conditioning
- Operant conditioning
What’s the purpose if the Gollin figure test?
- Used to test visual, implicit memory
- Over time, a drawing is slowly revealed
- Amnesic subjects perform normally at this task, indicative of its implicit role
- Also called the incomplete figures test.
What does the pursuit-rotor task assess?
- Assesses procedural implicit memory (motor functions)
- More of a difficult task (can take up to one hour to learn)
- Amnesic patients perform normally
What’s explicit memory used for?
- Memory for events and facts
- Necessitates recalling specific information
- Can be displayed by non-human animals
What does Morris’s Swimming task assess?
- Can test explicit and long-term memory, depending on the delay
- Can also test spatial memory (short or long-term)
What’s multiple memory theory?
- Proposes that we have a number of different kinds of memory, each of which is dependent upon different neural structures.
What flow of memory info does the multiple memory systems project?
- All memory starts in short-term, and then can get moved into long-term memory if required
- From long-term, memories can either go into explicit, implicit, and emotional (conscious and unconscious)
What did Karl Lashley attempt to search for?
- Was trying to find the engram for memory but searched in vain
- He tried by performing widespread cortical lesions to different brain areas
- The severity of memory disturbances was more so related to the size of the lesion, rather than the location