Lecture 7 - Learning and Memory Flashcards
What did Gall propose in the early 1800s about memory and personality?
Gall proposed that personality traits could be identified by examing bumps on the skull, a theory known as phrenology
What did Broca and Wernicke contribute in the mid-1800s to brain science?
Broca and Wernicke showed that different areas of the cortex serve distinct functions, particularly in language (Broca’s area for language production and Wernicke’s area for language comprehension)
What did Karl Lashley conclude from his rat lesion studies in the 1900s?
Karl Lashley proposed Mass Action (the whole cortex is involved in learning) and Equipotential (if one part of the cortex is damaged, another can compensate), based on maze learning after lesioning
What did Von Bechterew find in the early 19th century regarding memory localisation?
Von Bechterew observed that patients with marked memory impairments had softening of the temporal lobe, suggesting this region is linked to memory
Why did Patient HM undergo surgery in 1953? What did this involve?
Patient HM had severe epilepsy unresponsive to drugs. Surgeons removed his medial temporal lobe to stop the seizures
What kind of amnesia did Patient HM have before his 1953 surgery? What type of amnesia did he develop afterwards?
- Patient HM had graded retrograde amnesia prior to his surgery (memory loss from 1945-1953)
- He had severe anterograde amnesia after his 1953 surgery (couldn’t form new memories)
What memory abilities remained intact in Patient HM after surgery? (Give research)
Patient HM’s working (short-term) memory and procedural memory were intact.
- Wickelgren (1968): Normal forgetting rate unless rehearsal was interrupted
- Milner (1962, 1965): Learned mirror-tracing tasks
What is the difference between declarative and procedural memory?
- Declarative: Memory of facts and events (semantic and episodic)
- Procedural: Memory for skills and motor tasks (e.h., riding a bike)
What does the delayed non-match to sample task (Mishkin, 1978) show?
- Monkeys must choose the novel object to get a reward
- Damage to the perirhinal cortex impairs recognition memory, supporting its role in memory
What distinct roles do the perirhinal cortex and hippocampus play? Any supporting research?
- Perirhinal cortex: Object recognition and episodic memory
- Hippocampus: Spatial and episodic memory
- Nemanic et al. (2004) support this functional distinction
What did Burgess et al. (2002) find using virtual reality and fMRI?
When navigating a virtual town, participants activated the right hippocampus, confirming its role in spatial memory
What did Sherry & Duff (1996) discover about birds and the hippocampus?
Food-storing birds (like the Scrub-Jay) have a larger hippocampus, highlighting it role in spatial navigation and memory
What did Maguire et al. (2000) find in London taxi drivers?
- More experienced taxi drivers had a larger posterior hippocampus and smaller anterior hippocampus.
- Size correlated with years spent driving
What strengths and weaknesses did Maguire et al. (2006) find in taxi drivers?
(+) Taxi drivers are better at spatial tasks (e.g., deciding which landmark is closer)
(-) Taxi drivers are worse at visual memory tasks like the Rey-Osterrieth Figure
What is the Papez circuit, and how is it related to memory?
The Papez circuit is a network including the hippocampus, mammillary bodies, and anterior thalamus. It is involved in emotion regulation and declarative memory formation
What brain damage causes memory deficits similar to amnesia?
Lesions to the mammillary bodies and anterior thalamus, both part of the Papez circuit, impair memory
What does the animal model of human amnesia show about adjacent cortical damage?
- The animal model of human animals shows that damage to adjacent cortical areas, especially the perirhinal cortex, impairs recognition memory
- This model highlights how recognition deficits may not result solely from hippocampal damage
What are the main conclusions from human and animal memory studies?
- The medial temporal lobe is essential for memory, supported by human and animal studies
- There’s a clear declarative/procedural memory distinction
- Perirhinal cortex supports object and episodic memory
- Hippocampus supports spatial and episodic memory
- The Papez circuit is vital for memory and emotion regulation
- Hippocampus is part of the Papez circuit
