Cognitive Map Flashcards
What evidence is there that the hippocampus is always learning about location?
Rats left to explore a maze
Then given chance to find food
Rats with prev experience of maze find it fast that rats who don’t
So they must have memory of the maze
Do we know we don’t learn location by rote learning?
No
Because if in maze with multiple arms and the one with food is taken away, rats go to the next arm in the maze rather than being completely lost
They are still aware of the location of the food
Damage to which structure will impair spatial memory?
The hippocampus
How do we know the hippocampus is important in spatial memory?
MWM mice with hippocampal damage have trouble locating a platform
Even though have been on the same platform
What would be a reference memory error?
Doing something you should never have done
eg, in radial arm maze, going down an arm that’s never had food in it
What would be a working memory error?
Doing the same thing twice bc you cant remember the impact of the first thing
eg, in radial arm maze going down arm that had food in it, but has already been eaten
With constant repetition of the same task, the information is passed to the….?
Striatum
rote learning kinda
What is a place cell?
A neuron which only fires in a particular location of that environment
Place cells are topographically arranged in the hippocampus
T/F
F Its random (well we don't know what the organisation is)
Do place cells always fire in the same location in different environments?
ie always in the south west corner
No
They set new locations in different environments and then save this information as a map
What effect does age having on map formation?
Older rat –> doesn’t remember as well
Forms new map
What are the two kind of remapping?
Rate
Global
What is rate remapping?
Small environmental changes cause different firing rates in the SAME place cells
What is global remapping?
Large changes in environment causing a DIFFERENT set of place cells to be active
What did leutgeb et al 2005 discover about the variability of place cells rats?
That they are very aware of environments
Rats in the same box, but in different rooms exhibit different place cell firing
