lecture 16

Question 1

what is Classical Conditioning (Pavlovian Learning)

Answer 1

Unconditioned responses are reflexive, hardwired, fairly inflexible behavioural responses to unconditioned stimuli. For example, salivating in response to the taste of food or blinking in response to puffs of air to the eye. When these behaviours come under control of conditioned stimuli, it is called Classical Conditioning or Pavlovian Learning. Importantly, in these types of learning experiments the animal has no control over its environment. The animal will react to things, but they cannot really change what will happen

Question 2

what is Instrumental Conditioning (Operant Conditioning)

Answer 2

• Animals are always exploring their environments and sometimes their actions have consequences. Learning from the consequences of your
actions is called Instrumental Conditioning, Operant Conditioning, or Reinforcement Learning. Instrumental behaviours start off as flexible, volitional exploratory behaviours (e.g., pressing a lever or flipping on a light switch) and the likelihood these actions will be repeated depends on whether or not they were reinforced or punished.

Question 3

what is another term for Instrumental conditioning

Answer 3

Operant conditioning

Reinforcement learning

Question 4

simplify Instrumental conditioning

Answer 4

Learning that occurs in response to reinforcement, in response to consequences. The likelihood of you repeating an action depends on whether it was previously punished or reinforced.

Question 5

In contrast to Classical (Pavlovian) learning, operant conditioning requires what

Answer 5

that the animal can move and make decisions that have consequences

Question 6

what is Reinforcing stimulus

Answer 6

Appetitive stimulus. When it follows a particular behavior, it increases the likelihood the animal will repeat the behaviour. Reinforcement makes the behavior more likely to occur.

Question 7

what is Punishing stimulus

Answer 7

Aversive stimulus. When it follows a particular behavior, it decreases the likelihood the animal will repeat the behaviour. Punishment makes the behavior less likely to occur.

Question 8

whats Reinforcement

Answer 8

Learning provides a means for people to profit from experience—to make responses that provide favorable outcomes
• When good things happen (that is, when reinforcing stimuli occur), reinforcement mechanisms in brain become active, and the establishment of synaptic changes is facilitated

Question 9

The process of reinforcement strengthens what

Answer 9

a connection between neural circuits involved in perception (sight of the lever) and those involved and those involved in movement (the act of lever pressing).

Question 10

The are two major pathways between sensory association cortex and motor association cortex, what are they

Answer 10

Direct transcortical connections

Connections via basal ganglia and thalamus

Question 11

explain Direct transcortical connections

Answer 11

(connections from one area of the cerebral cortex to another)

Question 12

explain Connections via basal ganglia and thalamus.

Answer 12

• The synaptic strength of cortical and thalamic inputs to the basal ganglia is heavily dependent on dopamine signaling, which comes from the midbrain.
• The input nuclei of the basal ganglia (caudate + putamen + accumbens = striatum) are the primary locations for instrumental conditioning.

Question 13

what are the NEURAL CIRCUITS INVOLVED IN REINFORCEMENT

Answer 13

Ventral tegmental area (VTA)

Nucleus accumbens

Question 14

what is Ventral tegmental area (VTA)

Answer 14

Group of dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain whose axons primarily project to the ventral striatum (nucleus accumbens.)
• Dopamine release is a reinforcement signal

Question 15

what is Nucleus accumbens

Answer 15

Nucleus of ventral striatum (basal forebrain) near PFC

• Receives dopaminergic inputs from the ventral tegmental area and is thought to be involved in goal selection

Question 16

Studies with laboratory animals found that lesions of basal ganglia do what

Answer 16

disrupt instrumental conditioning but do not affect other forms of learning

Question 17

Lesions of the striatum (caudate nucleus and putamen) that receive visual information from ventral stream do what

Answer 17

do not disrupt visual perceptual learning, but they do impair monkeys’ ability to make learned visually guided operant responses

Question 18

As action sequences (movement and goal decisions) get repeated again and again what happens

Answer 18

they become more and more habitual, more ingrained and automatic.

Question 19

As action sequences (movement and goal decisions) get repeated again and again, they become more and more habitual, more ingrained and automatic.
Across this transition, different circuits within the basal ganglia become involved what

Answer 19

the action selection and action execution processes.

Question 20

Areas involved in the initial learning of movement sequences are different from what

Answer 20

those involved in automated actions

Question 21

what are THE DECLARATIVE MEMORIES

Answer 21

Episodic memory

Semantic memory

Question 22

what is Episodic memory

Answer 22

Personal experiences associated with a time and place. Autobiographical memory

Question 23

what is Semantic memory

Answer 23

Memory of facts and general information. This knowledge need not be associated with the time or place in which we learned the information

Question 24

explain the case of Henry Gustav Molaison (HM) and the hippocampus

Answer 24

first described by Brenda Milner in 1957
• Doctors cut out his hippocampus bilaterally to cure his epilepsy.
• It worked, but he lost the ability to form new explicit memories (severe anterograde amnesia).
• He also suffered from a graded retrograde amnesia (events that occurred within 1 or 2 years were lost as well as some that happened even longer ago than that.
• He still had a brief working memory and a high IQ, but he could not learn new words or names or learn to navigate a new space.
Researchers have been recording neural activity in the hippocampus now for over 50 years and trying to make sense of the firing patterns.

Question 25

what is Anterograde amnesia

Answer 25

refers to the inability to learn new information or retain new information ‘after’ brain injury. Memory for events that occurred before the injury remain largely intact

Question 26

what is Retrograde amnesia

Answer 26

refers to the inability to remember events that occurred ‘before‘ the brain injury

Question 27

is Complete amnesia in either direction common

Answer 27

no, it is rare

Question 28

what is Korsakoff’s syndrome

Answer 28

Permanent anterograde amnesia caused by brain damage, usually resulting from chronic
alcoholism. Korsakoff’s patients are unable to
form new memories but can still remember old ones before the brain damage occurred

Question 29

what is Confabulation

Answer 29

Reporting of memories of events that did not take place without intention to deceive
Seen in people with Korsakoff’s syndrome

Question 30

Damage to the hippocampus or to regions of the brain that supply its inputs and receive its outputs causes what

Answer 30

anterograde amnesia

Question 31

When amnesic patients are trained and tested, we find that they are capable of how many types of learning

Answer 31

three of the four major types of learning: perceptual learning, stimulus–response learning, and motor learning

Question 32

Although amnesic patients show many forms of implicit learning, they do not explicitly remember what

Answer 32

anything about what they have learned.

Question 33

what is Declarative (explicit) memory

Answer 33

Memory that can be verbally expressed, such as facts and personal events. Memory that can be consciously accessed

Question 34

what is Nondeclarative (implicit) memory

Answer 34

Unconscious memory whose formation does not depend on the hippocampal formation; a
collective term for perceptual, motor, and unconscious stimulus–response memory.

Question 35

Most psychologists believe that learning consists of at least two stages, what are they

Answer 35

short-term memory and long-term memory

Question 36

what is the Simplest model of the memory process

Answer 36

Says that sensory information enters short-term memory, rehearsal keeps it there, and eventually, the information makes its way into long-term memory, where it is permanently stored

Question 37

what is the Role of the Hippocampal Formation in Consolidation of Declarative Memories

Answer 37

The hippocampus is not the location of either short-term or long-term memories
• Patients with damage to the hippocampal formation can remember events that happened before their brain became damaged, and their short-term memory is relatively normal
• But hippocampal formation clearly plays role in process through which declarative memories are formed

Question 38

what is Memory Consolidation

Answer 38

Memory consolidation is the process by which short-term memories are crystallised into long-term memory

Question 39

Activity of the hippocampus is elevated when

Answer 39

after learning a memory task which correlates positively with performance

Question 40

In rodents, the hippocampus is required for what

Answer 40

newly learned spatial information, not information learned 30 days ago.
During 30 days, other regions
of the cerebral cortex consolidate and store the information.

Question 41

what is the Reconsolidation of Memories

Answer 41

Established memories can be altered or connected to newer memories
• In recent years, researchers have been investigating a phenomenon known as reconsolidation, which appears to involve modification of long-term memories

Question 42

During memory reactivation (memory recall) memories do what

Answer 42

enter a labile, unstable state and can be modified before being reconsolidated

Question 43

During memory reactivation (memory recall) memories enter a labile, unstable state and can be modified before being reconsolidated.
▪ Events that interfere with consolidation interfere with reconsolidation as well and can do what to memories

Answer 43

erase or make the memory inaccessible

Question 44

People with anterograde amnesia are unable to remember information about what kinds of things

Answer 44

the location of rooms, corridors, buildings, roads and other important items in their environment

Question 45

Subjects played a virtual reality game in which they had to navigate around a town until they became familiar with it.
▪ Subjects then played the game while their heads were in a PET scanner.
▪ During navigation, what became active

Answer 45

the right hippocampal formation became active and the amount of activity there was associated with subjects accuracy in navigation

Question 46

Hippocampal lesions disrupt ability to keep track of and remember what

Answer 46

spatial locations

Question 47

what is the The Morris water maze

Answer 47

The Morris water maze requires relational learning to navigate around the maze
•Animals get their bearings from relative locations of stimuli located outside maze—furniture, windows, doors, and so on

Mazes can also be used for nonrelational, stimulus– response learning
•If animals are always released at same place, they learn to head in particular direction—for example, toward a particular landmark they can see above the wall of maze