Lecture 3: Learning and Memory Flashcards
What is learning?
An inferred change in an organism’s mental state which results from experience, and which influences in a relatively permanent fashion and organism’s potential for subsequent adaptive behavior
List the Order of Memory (6)
- Sensory Memory
- Attention
- Short term/Working Memory
- Encoding/Consolidation
- Long Term Memory (Explicit and Implicit)
- Retrival
Explain Sensory Memory
- 1-3 secs
- 1st exposure to sensory stimuli (ex. visual, sound, touch)
Explain Short term/Working Memory
- Connection between the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex
- Active learning w/ repetition (eg. learning a phone #)
- Stored in the hippocampus
Explain Encoding/Consolidation
Hippocampus “amplifies” memory and send to corties
Explain Long Term Memory
- 1 sec to Lifetime
- Retainment of memories from the hippocampus into different corties
- Divided into Explicit Memory (Declarative) and Implicit Memory (Procedural)
Declarative further breaks down into episodic and semantic memory
Explain Retrieval
Bringing back memories from long-term memory back into short-term/working memory
What is phylogenetic/epigenetic memory?
- A cycle duration of generations (weeks to years)
- Only useful to a species
What is behavioral memory?
- A cycle time of minutes to days
- Only useful to humans
Who was patient H.M? What were the outcomes of studying him?
- hippocampus was removed to prevent epileptic seizures
- had difficulty forming new long-term memories (anterograde amnesia)
- STM/working memory remained intact
- Suggest that the hippocampus is vital for the formation of new long-term memories
What is explicit memory?
Deliberate recall of information that one recognizes as a memory
A division of Long-term memory
Declarative
What is implicit memory?
the influence of recent experience on behavior without realizing one is using a memory
A division of Long-term memory
- A specific form of nondeclarative, such as biases
- H.M. displayed greater “implicit” than “explicit” memory
What is Declarative memory?
the ability to state a memory into words
Explicit Memory
What is episodic memory?
Ability to recall single events
A division of Declarative memory
H.M. had difficulty with episodic and declarative memory
What is semantic memory?
Definitions and symbolism
A division of Declarative memory
What is procedural (non-declarative) memory?
ability to develop motor skills = remembering or learning how to do things
Implicit Memory
H.M.’s procedural memory remained intact
What is Hebbian learning (4)?
- Cells that fire together, wire together:
- stimulation of one neuron by another enhances that connection
- Increases in effectiveness occur because of simultaneous activity in the presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons
- Such “Hebbian” synapses may be critical for many kinds of associative learning
What is habituation?
a decrease in response to a stimulus that is presented repeatedly and accompanied by no change in other stimuli
- Depends upon a change in the synpase between the sensory neurons and the motor neurons
- Sensory neurons fail to excite motor neurons as they did previously
What is sensitization?
an increase in response to a mild stimulus as a result of previous exposure to more intense stimuli
How does sensitization occur (2)?
- Serotonin released from a facilitating neuron blocks potassium channels in the presynaptic neuron.
- Prolonged release of transmitter from that neuron results in prolonged sensitization
When does long-term potentiation occur?
when one or more axons bombard a dendrite with stimulation.
Leaves the synapse “potentiated” for a period of time and the neuron is more responsive to any stimulus
What is long-term depression (LTD)?
a prolonged decrease in response at a synapse that occurs when axons have been active at a low frequency
The opposite of LTP