Lecture 17

Question 1

What is an unconditioned stimulus?

Answer 1

A stimulus that has inherent value, like food or a painful shock

Question 2

What is an unconditoned response?

Answer 2

A bhevaioural response that is largely innate, hard wire (unlearned, undoncitioned)

Question 3

What is a conditioned stimulus?

Answer 3

A stimulus that was initially perceived as neutral but now is perceived as predictive of an US

Question 4

What is a conidtionned response?

Answer 4

A behavioural response that occurs in response to a CS, the behaviour is often similar to the UR that was eleiced by the US during training

Question 5

What is reinforcement learning?

Answer 5

Learning from the consequences of your own actions, from the receipt of reinforcement or punishment

Question 6

What determines the likelihood of you repeating an action?

Answer 6

Whether it was previously reinforced or punished

Question 7

How do instrumental behaviours start off as?

Answer 7

Flexible, volitional exploratory behaviours

Question 8

What type of conditioning is reinforcement learning?

Answer 8

instrumental conditional conditioning

Question 9

How does operant conditioning contrasts classical pavlovian learning?

Answer 9

operant conditioning requires that the animal can move and make decisions that influence their environment

Question 10

What is a reinforcing stimulus?

Answer 10

An appetitive stimulus. When it follows a particular behaviour, it increases the likelihood the animal will repeat the behaviour.

Question 11

What does reinforcement do?

Answer 11

Make it more likely for the behaviour to occur?

Question 12

What does the process of reinforcement strengthen?

Answer 12

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

Question 13

What is a punishing stimulus?

Answer 13

An aversive stimulus

Question 14

What happens when an aversive stimulus follows a particular behaviour?

Answer 14

It decreases the likelihood the animal will repeat the bheaviour

Question 15

What are the two major pathways between sesnory association cortex and motor association cortex?

Answer 15

Direct transcortical connection and the basal ganglia

Question 16

What are direct transcortical connections?

Answer 16

Connections from one area of the cerebral cortex to another

Question 17

What are direct transcortiocal connections involved in?

Answer 17

acquiring complex motor sequences that involve deliberation or instruction

Question 18

What does the basal ganglia integrate?

Answer 18

Sensory and motor information from throughout the brain

Question 19

What is the basal ganglia important for?

Answer 19

Habit formation

Question 20

What happens at first in regards to the basal ganglia?
Then?

Answer 20

At first it’s a passive observer but then as behaviours are repeated again and again, the basal ganglia begins to learn what to do

Question 21

What happens eventually in regards to the basal ganglia?

Answer 21

It takes over most of the details of the process, leaving the transcortical circuits free to do something else

Question 22

What is the strength of cortical inputs to the basal ganglia regulated by?

Answer 22

Dopamine signaling

Question 23

What is the major input nucleus of the basal ganglia?

Answer 23

The striatum (or neostriatum)

Question 24

Where do the dopamine neurons in the midbrain project to? What do they signal?

Answer 24

They project to the striatum.
They signal reinforcement and punishment

Question 25

What do the amount of dopamine in the striatum correspond to?

Answer 25

The motivation and the value of moving in and engaging with the environemnt.

Question 26

What do the transient fluctuations in dopamine signaling seem to drive?

Answer 26

Learning by signaling how unexpectadly good or bad the current moment is

Question 27

What do the different areas of the striatum process?

Answer 27

Different types of information

Question 28

What do the different areas of the striatum regulate?

Answer 28

People's priorities

Question 29

What happens when action sequences and thought patterns are repeated again and again?

Answer 29

They become more and more habitual, more ingrained and automatic

Question 30

What disrupts reinforcement learning and habit learning?

Answer 30

Basal ganglia leasoning

Question 31

What doesn't basal ganglia lesioning affect?

Answer 31

Perceptual learning or stimulus-stimulus learning

Question 32

What happens when doctors cut out Henry Gustav Molaisons hippocampus bilaterly to cure his epilepsy?

Answer 32

It worked (no more epilepsy) but he lost the ability to form new explicit memories (severe anterograde amnesia)

Question 33

What else did Henry Gustabe Molaison who had a bilateral hippocampus removal suffer from?

Answer 33

He suffered from a graded retrograde amnesia as well

Question 34

What is permanent anterograde amnesia aused by brain damange, usually from chronic alcholism?

Answer 34

Korsakoff's syndrome

Question 35

What is permanent anterograde amnesia aused by brain damange, usually from chronic alcholism?

Answer 35

Korsakoff's syndrome

Question 36

What are Korsakoff's patients unable to do?

Answer 36

Form new memories but can still remember old ones that before the brain damage occured

Question 37

What is confabulation?

Answer 37

Reporting of memories of events that did not take place without intention to deceive

Question 38

Where is confabulation seen?

Answer 38

In people with Korsakoff's syndrome

Question 39

What happens when there's no functional hippocampus?

Answer 39

Animals cannot form new episodic or semantic memories - but their short term, working memory is generally fine They usually live in the moment

Question 40

What is the hippocampus involved with?

Answer 40

Converting short term memories into explicit long-term memories (memory consolidation)

Question 41

What are the two learning stages?

Answer 41

Short term memory and long term memory

Question 42

What is the simplest model of the memory process?

Answer 42

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 43

What is reflected by a unique patter of neural activity during any given moment?

Answer 43

The constellantion of sensory input, thought processes and emotion you are currently experiencing

Question 44

What is generally thought in regards to the memories and the hippocampus?

Answer 44

Memories are not stored in the hippocampus. The hippocampus forms a hub, node or index that is capable of both representing and reactivating the sensory system that initia;;y encoded any given event/expereience

Question 45

What is memory encoding?

Answer 45

Cortical sensory systems sending stuff to the hippocampus

Question 46

Whats memory retrieval?

Answer 46

The hippocampus sending stuff to the cortical sensory systems

Question 47

What happens over time in humans?

Answer 47

Memory gradually becomes less and less dependant on the hippocampus

Question 48

What is happening in the years that memories are dependant on the hippocampus?

Answer 48

Hippocampal activity is training the cortex, causing a reorganization of the synaptic weights in the cortex so that intra cortical connections can support memory recall on their own

Question 49

What did rodents need a functional hippocampus to remember? Why?

Answer 49

Newly learned spatial information but not information learned 30 days ago. Memories are consolidated and stored in the cerebral cortex during this time

Question 50

What is anterograde amnesia?

Answer 50

Inability to learn new information or retain new information after brain injury. Memory for events that occured before the injry remain largely intact

Question 51

What is retrograde amnesia?

Answer 51

Referes to the inability to remember events that occured 'before' the brain injury

Question 52

Is complete amnesia in either direction rare?

Answer 52

Yes

Question 53

Does nondeclarative learning ability remain intact when there's damage to the hippocampus or to regions of that supply its inputs?

Answer 53

Yes

Question 54

What happens when amnesic patients are trained and tested?

Answer 54

We find that they are capable of three of the four major types of learning But they don't explicitly remember anything about WHAT they have learned

Question 55

What do basal ganglia lesioning disreput?

Answer 55

Response learning

Question 56

What does hippocampal lesions disrupt?

Answer 56

Place learning