Learning and Memory

Question 1

What is learning?

Answer 1

acquisition of new information or knowledge

Question 2

What is memory?

Answer 2

Retention of learned information

Question 3

What is declarative (explicit) memory?

Answer 3

Memory of facts and events

Question 4

What is nondeclarative (implicit) memory?

Answer 4

Procedural learning and memory
Associative learning and memory

Question 5

What is procedural learning and memory?

Answer 5

Memory for skills, habits, behaviors.
Ex. Riding a bike

Question 6

What is associative learning and memory?

Answer 6

Classical conditioning

Question 7

What is long-term memory?

Answer 7

Memories you can recall days, months or years after they were originally stored

Question 8

What is short-term memory?

Answer 8

Memories that last seconds to hours

Question 9

What is memory consolidation?

Answer 9

Converting memories into permanent form

Question 10

What is working memory?

Answer 10

Temporary form of information stage.
The maximum number of randomly chosen numbers a person can repeat back after hearing a list read (7)
limited in capacity

Question 11

What is retrograde amnesia?

Answer 11

Memory loss for events before the trauma. Usually limited to loss of memory months or years before the trauma

Question 12

What is anterograde amnesia?

Answer 12

Inability to form new memories following trauma

Question 13

What is the case study of HM?

Answer 13

HM had a bilateral temporal lobectomy due to his having seizures that made it difficult to live.
He had partial retrograde amnesia
Unable to form new declarative memories.
Extreme anterograde amnesia.
Found that the hippocampus is involved in learning and memory

Question 14

What tasks can be used to investigate spatial learning?

Answer 14

The radial arm maze, Morris water maze,

Question 15

What is the radial arm maze?

Answer 15

At start of each trial each arm is baited
Rat placed in center
Rats make a mental list of places it has visited
Rats learn to visit each arm only once

Question 16

What is the morris water maze?

Answer 16

Rat placed in circular pool of cloudy water
Rat must find hidden platform under surface of water
Rat learns to swim directly to platform
Platform remains in fixed position relative to visible cues outside pool

Question 17

What is perseveration?

Answer 17

Repetition of choices, even when they are incorrect

Question 18

When is perseveration observed?

Answer 18

When rats have bilateral hippocampal damage and they are performing the radial arm maze and morris water maze

Question 19

What are place cells?

Answer 19

They are pyramidal neurons
Place cells’ place field can sometimes be broadly responsive, sometimes focused point in space
Found in CA1 hippocampus
The site for a cognitive map tells the animal to know where it is in its environment

Question 20

What are head direction cells?

Answer 20

Cells fire when the head is in a fixed direction with respect to the surrounding environment
Function as neural compass that signals animal’s direction heading to the navigational system
Using internal and external cues
Found in the subiculum

Question 21

What are grid cells?

Answer 21

Evenly spread-out grids
The place where all of the grids overlap is where you are
Functions as a GPS system
Found in Medial Entorhinal Cortex (MEC)

Question 22

What are the properties of long term potentiation (LTP) in CA1?

Answer 22

To induce LTP, input 1 axons are given a tetanus shot (brief burst of high frequency stimulation)
LTP is input-specific
The synapses need to be active at the same time that the postsynaptic CA1 neuron is strongly depolarized.
Need temporal summation and spatial summation

Question 23

How is LTP mediated?

Answer 23

It is mediated by the NMDA receptor
NMDA receptor is both ligand (glutamate) and voltage-gated (blocked by Mg2+)
Mg2+ block is removed by depolarization.

Question 24

What are the mechanisms of protein kinases for LTP?

Answer 24

Ca2+ entering through NMDA receptors activates calcium-dependent protein kinases
Kinases change the effectiveness of existing postsynaptic AMPA receptors by phosphorylating them
Kinases stimulate insertion of new AMPA receptors into the membrane

Question 25

What are the properties of long-term depression (LTD) in CA1?

Answer 25

To induce LTD, input 1 axons are given a tetanus (brief burst of low-frequency stimulation)
LTD is input-specific.
What is required for LTD is that synapses be active at the same time that the postsynaptic CA1 neuron is weakly depolarized

Question 26

What is the Bienenstock, Cooper, and Monroe Model (BCM) for bidirectional synaptic plasticity?

Answer 26

Synapses that are active when the postsynaptic cell is only weakly depolarized by other inputs will undergo LTD instead of LTP

Question 27

How can Ca2+ influx can trigger LTP?

Answer 27

High Ca2+ activates protein kinases (phosphorylate proteins) that yield LTP

Question 28

How can Ca2+ influx can trigger LTD?

Answer 28

Low Ca2+ activates protein phosphatases (dephosphorylate proteins) that yield LTD

Question 29

What happens in NMDA receptor knockout mice?

Answer 29

Impairs LTP
Less precise place fields in the hippocampus
Impaired learning of water maze task (impaired spatial learning)