Learning & Memory Flashcards
What does working memory do?
It holds information in your mind for a short time in an active conscious state
What is central to the system of memory?
Fidelity (accuracy)
How many items can a normal person remember in working memory?
7 +-2
What does the central executive system do?
It controls the flow of information
What is the central executive system supported by?
Two additional memory stores: phonological store alongside a silent rehearsal loop
What does phonological store do?
It processes speech perception and stores spoken words we hears for 1 to 2 seconds
What does a silent rehearsal loop do?
It processes speech production and rehearses and stores verbal information from the phonological store
When happens when you read words of numbers visually?
Information will be transcribed into a phonological code and stored for a short while in the two part system
What does a visual sketchpad do?
Hold on to images of objects for long enough for you to manipulate them in your mind’s eye
Where is working memory largely located?
In the frontal and parietal lobes
Where are auditory parts of working memory located?
Left frontal and parietal lobes where they interact with neuronal networks involved in speech, planning and decision-making
Where is the visual sketchpad located?
Right hemispheres
How did working-memory evolve?
It may have co-evolved with speech
How is a memory formed of an object and when and where it has been seen?
Information enters the visual system and is passed down a ventral pathway from the striate cortex to the medial temporal lobe through a cascade of networks that figure out shape, colour, object density and whether this object is familiar or not
How do we have the ability to recognise familiar things and people?
There are areas in the cortex that extract a perceptual representation of what we are looking at and it is used to store and later recognise the things around us
What is the semantic memory?
It is where we store the factual knowledge we accumulated
What is a property of facts in the brain?
They are organised into categories
How are memory retrieved?
The search process shuttle through tree diagrams in the storehouse to find things efficiently
How are skills learnt?
Through deliberate and extensive practice
How are emotional learning done?
It is much more rapid
What type of learning are skills and emotional learning?
Conditioning
What parts of the brain are important for skill learning?
Basal ganglia and cerebellum
What part of the brain is very important for emotional learning?
amygdala
What type of memory keeps track of personal experience?
Episodic memory
What is the difference between remembering events and learning facts?
Events happen only once so you cannot rerun an event, thus the system has to learn quickly because it has to
What is amnesia?
The lost of memories
What is retrograde amnesia?
People cannot remember things that happened before they became ill
What does the hippocampus deal with?
It deals largely with memory consolidation, where information from working to short-term memory is encoded in long-term memory for future retrieval
What does amnesia patients with damage to hippocampus demonstrate?
Some degree of unimpaired semantic memory, despite a loss of episodic memory due to spared parahippocampal cortex, this results in them knowing languages but don’t remember how they know
What is semantic dementia?
A type of Alzheimer’s disease
What is imprinting?
Young animal come to recognise and attach to parent or other animal
What happens in the young animals mind during imprinting?
Chemical transmitters are released to act on receptors involved in storing some kind of precise image of the mother
How do young animals know what food are safe to eat?
Second-messenger chemicals transmit signals to the nucleus of brain sells where genes are activated to make special proteins that can fix memory
What are place cells?
They are neurons in the hippocampus that fire action-potentials only when animal explodes a familiar place
How do place cells help animal to find its way around the world?
Different cells code different parts of the environment such that a population of cells is involved in mapping a whole area, other cells in nearby brain area code for the direction the animal is moving in, these two areas work together to create a map of space and sense of direction
What does the navigational learning system relate to?
Both semantic and episodic memory, animals form a stable representation of where things are in their territory and map of space provides a memory framework to remember events
When is learning about places impaired?
When a drug that blocks NMDA receptors is applied to the hippocampus
How are maps formed?
Through encoding of the correct location of the Omar form into memory using plasticity triggered by NMDA receptors
How are rally serious forgetfulness alleviated?
Drugs that make NMDA or AMPA receptors work better or drugs that stimulate the cascade (passing on) of second-messenger signals
What is cognitive engineering?
Take advantage of what has been learned about how information is encoded, stored and consolidated and then retrieved and through paying attention, spacing out learning sessions and getting frequent reminders to help improve memory
