LECTURE 6 Flashcards
What happened to patient HM and why was he so important to our understanding of the mechanisms of memory?
Removed parts medial temporal lobes including hippocampus resulting in severe permanent amnesia.
his case demonstrated the essential role of the hippocampus in the formation and retrieval of new declarative memories.
Why is plasticity of brain functions of such importance? Define learning and memory, and how they depend on neural plasticity.
Brain plasticity is important because it allows the brain to adapt and change. Learning is acquiring new knowledge, while memory is retaining and recalling information. Both learning and memory rely on neural plasticity, which enables the formation and modification of neural connections, facilitating the acquisition and retention of information.
Explain some of the ways to study learning and memory in the laboratory.
Behavioral Experiments: These involve designing tasks that assess various aspects of learning and memory, such as maze navigation, object recognition, or fear conditioning. Animals or humans are trained on these tasks, and their performance is measured to evaluate the acquisition, retention, and retrieval of learned information.
Neuroimaging Techniques: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) are used to examine brain activity during learning and memory tasks. These techniques allow researchers to observe changes in neural activation and connectivity patterns associated with specific memory processes.
Electrophysiological Recordings: Techniques like electroencephalography (EEG) and single-unit recordings provide insights into the electrical activity of the brain during learning and memory tasks. They allow for the measurement of event-related potentials, neural oscillations, and the activity of individual neurons, providing information about temporal dynamics and specific neural correlates of memory processes.
Explain the phenomenon of Hebbian synaptic plasticity. How could it explain classical conditioning or even more complex forms of learning?
Cells that fire togheter wire togheter. It explains classical conditioning by strengthening connections between stimuli. In more complex learning, it forms neural representations through repeated activity patterns, enabling storage and recall of information.
Explain the phenomenon of long-term potentiation (LTP) of hippocampal neurotransmission. How does LTP relate to short-term and long-term memory.
LTP is the strengthening of synaptic connections in the hippocampus. It is associated with both short-term and long-term memory, contributing to the formation and storage of memories.
Which telencephalic systems play a role in declarative memory and what happens to these systems during spatial learning?
Hippocampus, dorsal striatum and medial prefrontal
During spatial learning, these systems undergo changes such as increased activation and synaptic plasticity, allowing for the encoding and consolidation of spatial information.
Explain the role of the corticostriatal system in learning and memory.
facilitates reward-based learning, habit formation, motor learning, and procedural memory.
It integrates information between the prefrontal cortex and striatum to support the acquisition, storage, and execution of learned behaviors.
How did Richard Morris and others show that the processes of synaptic plasticity are related to learning and memory in laboratory rodents?
Richard Morris and others showed that the processes of synaptic plasticity are related to learning and memory in laboratory rodents by demonstrating that spatial learning tasks like the morris water maze were associated with enhanced long-term potentiation (LTP) in the hippocampus, a brain region crucial for memory. Blocking LTP by lesioning the hippocampus impaired spatial learning, providing evidence for the involvement of synaptic plasticity in memory formation
