Learning and Memory

Question 1

What is our working definition of a memory?

Answer 1

Experientially induced changes in the nervous system that may alter future behavior

Question 2

What type of learning are habits associated with?

Answer 2

Stimulus-response (S-R) learning

Question 3

What is Thorndike’s Law of Effect?

Answer 3

A behavior produced by an organism is likely to increase in the future if a desirable outcome is obtained

Question 4

What er Tolman’s three cognitive arguments about learning?

Answer 4

Learning involved making associations among stimuli in environment – no response was necessary
No “biologically significant event” was necessary for learning
You do not need reinforcement or punishment for learning

Question 5

What type of learning do rats show early in training?

Answer 5

Place learning

Question 6

What type of learning do rats show when overtrained?

Answer 6

S-R learning

Question 7

How do place and S-R learning differ with the associations they make?

Answer 7

S-R learning makes associations between a stimuli and a response that will bring about the desired effect.
Place learning makes associations between multiple stimuli.

Question 8

What type of memories are the hippocampus critical for?

Answer 8

Spatial Memories

Question 9

What type of memories are believed to be the basis for declarative memories?

Answer 9

Spatial memories

Question 10

What type of memories is the caudate nucleus critical for?

Answer 10

Response learning

Question 11

What advantage does response learning have over spatial/place learning?

Answer 11

Response learning requires less cognitive load than place/ spatial learning. Shifting to caudate allows hippocampus to “ponder other things.”

Question 12

Describe the Trisynaptic circuit of the hypothalamus

Answer 12

Entorhinal cortex to dentate gyrus (DG) granule cells -> CA3 pyramidals -> CA1 pyramidals

Question 13

What is the name for the Entorhinal->DG path?

Answer 13

Perforant Path

Question 14

What is the name for the fibers from DG->CA3?

Answer 14

Mossy FIbers

Question 15

What is the name for the fibers from CA3->CA1?

Answer 15

Schaffer collaterals

Question 16

What role does the ventral hippocampus (anterior hippocampus in primates) seem to have a greater role in?

Answer 16

Emotional processing

Question 17

How does the brain track time (short term, not circadian)?

Answer 17

Ensembles of neurons in the hippocampus are sequentially active

Question 18

What is the evidence for neuronal ensembles tracking time?

Answer 18

Animals’ ability to time responses precisely goes down as delay increases, and ensembles become more diffuse with greater passages of time

Question 19

What do the cells encoding spatial and temporal relationships suggest about the hippocampus?

Answer 19

They suggest the hippocampus plays a broad role in “relational” learning

Question 20

Where does the hippocampus get most of its information?

Answer 20

The entorhinal cortex

Question 21

What type of info does the medial entorhinal likely provide?

Answer 21

Spatial information

Question 22

What type of info does the lateral entorhinal likely provide?

Answer 22

What/identity information

Question 23

What are the key systems for non-declarative memories?

Answer 23

The cerebellum and basal ganglia.

Question 24

What type of learning is the ventromedial part of the nucleus accumbens (shell) important for?

Answer 24

Reinforcement learning

Question 25

How is the connection between a response and an outcome “stamped in” at the accumbens shell?

Answer 25

Dopamine increases following the first (few?) reward(s)

Question 26

How was DA in the accumbens shell shown to be important for reinforcement learning.

Answer 26

Blocking DA in the accumbens shell prevents reinforcement learning