Lecture 4 Flashcards
What happened to rats in an enriched environment vs impoverished?
2000 extra synapses per neuron.
Can new synapses be formed?
both young and adult brains can form new synapses in response to new situations.
What leads to brain structure change? What can we see in humans?
Experience which is likely to lead to memory formation changes the structure of the brain, this change in structure includes a change in synaptic connectivity. These changes in synapses are in turn associated with better memory. Enrichment appears to aid in preventing age-related cognitive decline and reducing the risk of neurodegenerative disease in humans (possibly because more synapses to be affected meaning less overall effect if some are lost).
What is memory?
Memory is the way in which we record the past for later use in the present. There are levels of memory, such as biological level, individual, social, cultural.
What does memory at the individual level involve?
Memory at the individual level involves:
Encoding, the conversion of information into a form that can be stored in memory (from sound and sight to action potentials).
Storage (the creation of a trace of this information within the nervous system).
Retrieval(An attempt to recover the memory trace).
What was EbbingHaus’ forgetting curve
Ebbinghaus asked people to remember syllables and then asked them to recall them instantly(100%), 20 mins (60%), 60 mins(42%), 9 hrs (39%), 1 day (38%), 2 days (36%), 5 days (27%) and 31 days (about 23%). He used nonsense syllables which meant nothing so nobody could link them to anything (increasing ability to recall due to reminders in real life), although this means the information was not meaningful to remember(not useful).
What did George Sperling do?
George Sperling displayed 9 letters for 50 milliseconds, the subject could recall about 4-5.
He also displayed 12 letters in 3 rows and played a tone withing 250ms of the flash to tell them which to recall and found the subject could recall 3 out of 4 letters typically. If the delay was increased to 1 second this was reduced to 1-2.
What is the magic number for memory span stimuli?
7 +- 2
