Learning and Memory Flashcards
Why is it important to study learning in medicine?
- if we understand how behaviour is learned we may be able to change it
- we need to understand how learning may contribute to psychological/psychiatric illnesses
What is classical conditioning?
What are the 3 stages?
- also called pavlovian conditioning
- learning a new behaviour by the process of association - in simple terms two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response in a person or animal
Stage 1: Pre conditioning - unconditioned stimulus –> unconditioned response
- this stage also involved the neutral stimulus, this neutral stimulus does not produce a response until paired with the unconditioned stimulus
Stage 2: During conditioning - the neutral stimulus is paired with the unconditioned stimulus at which point it now becomes the conditioned stimulus
Stage 3: Post conditioning - now the conditioned stimulus has been paired with the unconditioned stimulus to create a new conditioned response
What is the Little Albert experiment?
- Albert B, 9 months old
- frightened of loud noises, not afraid of white rats
- after classical conditioning developed fear of white rats
- he also developed phobias of animals associated with rats (this is known as generalisation)
What are the 3 principles of operant conditioning?
- postive reinforcement
- negative reinforcement
- punishment
What is operant conditioning?
behaviour that is reinforced, tends to be repeated and behaviour which is not reinforced tends to die out
What a classical and operant conditioning both examples of?
associative learning
Think about how classical conditioning and operant conditioning contribute to alcohol misuse/dependence.
How could techniques based on classical and operant conditioning principles be used in treatment?
Classical conditioning = certain cues have powerful affects on addicted people, e.g. an evening watching tv becomes associated with having a bottle of wine
Operant conditioning = reward and behaviour, drinking makes you lose inhibitions and destress
What is social learning theory?
Describe the experiment that helped prove this.
Bandura - aggression experiment
- had children watch video of an adult being aggressive towards a clown toy
- children then mimicked that behaviour
- learn by watching other people’s behaviour and its consequences, imitation/modelling,
What are the 3 stages of memory?
- Encoding - exposed to stimulus/knowledge, last a few seconds
- Storage - hippocampus, medial temporal lobe
- Retrieval
What is the simple model of memory?
Where are these memories stored?
external stimuli –> sensory memory –> STM (frontal/parietal storage)–> LTM (hippocampus)
What are the features of short term memory?
limited capacity
short duration
maintenance via rehearsal (working memory)
forgetting via displacement
What are the features of long term memory?
unlimited capacity
variable duration
forgetting via interference and decay
cues and context aid retrieval
How much of medical consultations do patients remember?
50%
even less of anxious and elderly patients and when prognosis is bad
Give an example of the following causes of memory impairment:
- diffuse brain disease
- focal brain disease
- physiological disturbance
- psychiatric illness
- diffuse brain disease –> dementias
- focal brain disease –> amnesias
- physiological disturbance –> delirium
- psychiatric illness –> schizophrenia, depression, anxiety
What structures of the brain play a role in memory?
hippocampus prefrontal cortex basal forebrain mediodorsal nucleus cerebellum inferotemporal cortex rhinal cortex amygdala
