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Neuroscience 3 > Memory > Flashcards

Memory Flashcards

1
Q

What did Lashley study in the 1920s

A

Protocol:
- Trained rats to run in mazes
- Removed different areas of cortex
- Retested rats to see how much they retained

Findings:
- Severity of impairment correlated with size of cortical area removed
- However, the impairment was unrelated to location of lesion

  • Laws of mass action - all cortical areas contribute equally to learning and memory - it cant be localised
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2
Q

What is anterograde and retrograde amnesia?

A

Anterograde Amnesia - cannot form new long term memories

Retrograde Amnesia - cannot recall long term memories formed during a period before trauma, temporally graded

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3
Q

What happened to HM

A
  • Had surgery to remove medial aspect of temporal lobes bilaterally to alleviate epilepsy symptoms
  • Had complete anterograde amnesia: could not form new LTMs
  • Also had partial retrograde amnesia: could remember childhood but not few years prior to surgery
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4
Q

What does the autobiographical memory interview examine

A
  • Retrograde memory
  • Taps into semantic and episodic memory
  • Comprised of factual questions probing personal information
  • Other methods: famous faces, TV programmes
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5
Q

Which areas of the medial temporal lobe were damaged in HM?

A
  • Hippocampus
  • Amygdala
  • Entorhinal, perirhinal and parahippocampal cortex
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6
Q

Which of the following are MTLs required for based of HM and others with MTL damage?

a) STM
b) Working memory
c) Consolidation (STM->LTM)
d) LTM
e) Perceptual and cognitive abilities

A

a) N
b) N
c) YES
d) Not the ultimate storage site of LTM
e) N

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7
Q

Not all LTM is affected in HM, what isn’t?

A
  • Some skills such as mirror drawing (HM cant remember practicing the skill but does imrove)
  • Mirror reading
  • Basically just cognitive skills
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8
Q

What is the difference between the LTM types: declarative and non-declarative memory

A

Declarative:
- Representational
- Made up of semantic and episodic

Non-declarative:
- Made up of priming + skills as well as associative conditioning (emotional conditioning / muscle memory)

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9
Q

Where is responsible for the processing of the following types of memory?

a) Episodic
b) Semantic
c) Priming
d) Skills + Habits
e) Skeletal musculature
f) Emotional response
g) STM

A

a) Hippocampus
b) Medial temporal lobe ctx
c) Neocortex
d) Striatum
e) Cerebellum
f) Amygdala
g) Prefrontal cortex

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10
Q

SAQ style, what is the delayed non-matching to sample (DNMS) task, what animal did it target (+why is this important), and what sort of memory did it examine?

What was the key finding Mishkin found as a result of this?

A
  • Animal experiments are useful because they allow targeted manipulation of specific brain areas e.g., the medial temporal lobe
  • There was trouble examining declarative memory in animals as mazes and memorising acts was testing procedural memory
  • In macaque monkeys, the DNMS test exploits the natural curiosity for novel objects - testing RECOGNITION MEMORY
  • Mishkin found that bilateral medial temporal lobe lesions caused DELAY-DEPENDENT deficits (STM was intact but LTM impaired)
  • The single structure in which a lesion caused this deficit was the PERIRHINAL CORTEX
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11
Q

Outline developmental amnesia, including one case study that helped understand it.

A
  • Beth, Jon and Kate all had complications at the time of birth involving oxygen deprivation
  • This resulted in a damaged hippocampus
  • Were thought to be very forgetful but otherwise normal in every way
  • They had selective deficit in EPISODIC memory however their semantic memory was intact (does not require hippocampus)
  • They were examined using virtual reality games where each room had different characters, objects, questions etc.
  • Jon was not impaired in object recognition, but was in EPISODIC (i.e., the order of events)
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12
Q

How did researchers examine spatial memory in rats

A
  • Radial arm maze
  • All arms baited, tests memory of which arms have been visited already
  • Hippocampus lesions caused impairment in spatial (AND temporal) memory
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13
Q

What type of memory is the hippocampus responsible for? List some case studies that were useful in determining this

A
  • Episodic memory
  • Damage results in spared semantic memory but damaged episodic in HUMANS
  • Damage in RATS disrupts spatial memory and temporal order memory
  • Possible role of hippocampus in episodic memory is to provide the spatial and temporal features of events, and perhaps also to associate this information with the events themselves
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14
Q

What is priming?
What are some features of it?

A

an improvement on the ability to detect or identify words or objects after recent experience with them

  • Unconscious
  • Does not require medial temporal lobe
  • Can last long time
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15
Q

Describe the role of PET in the study of memory

A
  • PET was used to identify activity in the visual neocortex.
  • Found activity reduced when words had been shown before on a word stem task (less activity for primed words)
  • also used in fear memory
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16
Q

What do lesions to the striatum present as?

How was this tested in rats and humans?

A
  • Impaired HABIT MEMORY TASK (this was done in rats using the radial arm maze, lighting up baited arms in a specific order)
  • Rats were fine in other radial arm maze experiment (spatial memory)
  • Spatial memory tasks intact
  • Humans underwent WEATHER FORECASTING TASK
  • This involves gradual association between cues and weather
  • Cards predict the weather in a probabilistic fashion
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17
Q

What does the Wisconsin card-sorting task examine?

A

STM and Working memory in the prefrontal cortex

18
Q

Describe two methods that revealed correlational evidence between fear and amygdala activation

A
  • PET - fearful faces resulted in left amygdala activation than happy faces (using regional cerebral blood flow)
  • fMRI - used the whites of eyes. Larger whites from a frightened face activated amygdala
19
Q

What occurs in Urbach-Weithe disease

A
  • Amygdala lesions
  • No fear
20
Q

How does fear conditioning work?

A
  • Freezing is a response of animals to immediate fear
  • It can be elicited by sound or by context or a mix of the two
  • Time spent immobilised can be used as a proxy for fear response
  • Conditioned stimulus (tone) can be paired with unconditioned stimulus (shock), US can then be removed etc
  • Gives qualitative information on the aggregation and dissipation of the fear response
21
Q

Outline the role of LTP in fear learning, including the result of D-AP5 administration

A
  • Fear memory requires activation of NMDARs in the amygdala
  • D-AP5 impairs fear learning (NMDAR antag)
  • Also requires protein synthesis in amygdala
  • Inhibitor of protein synthesis severely decreased conditioned freezing of mice
  • Optogenetic control of the amygdala reduced fear response
22
Q

From which two systems does the amygdala receive input from?

A
  • Auditory (thalamus + cortex)
  • Somatosensory (thalamus + cortex)
23
Q

What are 3 techniques used to weaken fear?

A
  • Extinction
  • Counterconditioning
  • Blocking reconsolidation
24
Q

Outline extinction as a method of weakening fear. Where is responsible for this in rodents?

A
  • Extinction refers to LEARNING to inhibit the fear response when presented with the unconditioned stimulus
  • Is possible but RENEWAL can occur after re-instating the unconditioned stimulus
  • In rodents, lesions to the infralimbic cortex inhibits extinction is critical for retaining the memory of learned extinction
25
Q

Outline counterconditioning as a method of fear weakening

A
  • This is having humans think of something calming around a fearful stimulus - has been proven to reduce fear response

However:
- Spontaneous recovery still occurs
- So doesn’t reduce return of fear

26
Q

Outline reconsolidation as a method of fear weakening

A
  • Refers to the reactivation of fearful memory, then reconsolidation in a positive way leading to long term memory in an effort to weaken the fear memory
  • Targets protein synthesis inhibitors to inhibit formation of LT memories
27
Q

What is the difference between Egocentric and Allocentric reference frames in spatial cognition?

A

Egocentric
- Centred on observer
- Coordinate systems centred on body/head
- When observer moves, as does point of reference

Allocentric
- Distances and directions of external objects are coded relative to the environment and each other
- External coordinate systems (N, E, S, W)
- Observer moves their position within the reference frame

28
Q

What are the 3 navigation strategies?

A
  • Path integration
  • Route learning
  • Cognitive mapping
29
Q

What is path integration? what is an example in the natural world, and an experiment used to test it? Also what SPECIFIC cues drive it

A
  • Path integration is continuous tracking of position and orientation in relation to a fixed starting point based on cues derived from SELF-MOTION
  • Large part of these from the VESTIBULAR SYSTEM, also from OPTIC FLOW and PROPRIOCEPTION
  • Example: Cataglyphis desert ants
  • Live in environment with no landmarks and chemtrails dont work
  • Perform big excursions in search of food then return via shortest route
  • They essentially use path integration to calculate a homing vector based on distance travelled and direction
  • Example EXPT:
  • Human triangle completion task - humans bad
30
Q

Which areas of the brain are responsible for path integration?

A

Hippocampus and Medial Entorhinal Cortex

Found from lesion studies in rats

31
Q

What are 3 self-motion cues the body uses for path integration?

A
  • Vestibular input
  • Optic flow
  • Proprioception
32
Q

What is route learning? Where is responsible for it (how was this found)

A
  • Navigation along a specific route through a series of decision points encoded in terms of required body movements
  • Provides egocentric representation of a specific route
  • Is sequential (series of actions, encoded in one direction)
  • Right caudate nucleus responsible for route retrieval - patients in fMRI while undergoing route learning tasks
33
Q

Does route learning allow for flexible navigation?

A

no

34
Q

What is cognitive mapping? and what is the experiment used to examine it?

A
  • Is an allocentric representation of a place providing the location of objects in the environment relative to each other
  • Allows inference of spatial relations between distant locations and novel route computation

Example EXPT:
- Morris water maze
- Rodents swim to hidden platform in opaque water
- Cannot learn route, must use external cues

35
Q

Which area of the brain is responsible for cognitive mapping?

A

Hippocampus
- Rats with hippocampal lesions are impaired in the spatial reference memory task
- So hippocampus vital for allocentric computations
- fMRI in humans supported this

36
Q

What are 3 types of navigational cells in the brain?

A
  • Place cells
  • Grid cells
  • Head direction cells
37
Q

What are place cells, where are they found and what navigation strategies does it support?

A
  • Collection of hippocampal cells that light up in specific combinations that are associated with place
  • Represent spatial layout of environment; anchored to external landmarks; largely visual but also proprioception involved
  • Support cognitive mapping and path integration
  • First found in epileptic patients playing taxi game - Ekstrom
38
Q

What is the function of grid cells, where are they?

A
  • Grid cells give information about distance travelled
  • Recorded from medial entorhinal cortex (MEC)
  • Grid covers 2D environment
  • Controlled by visual cues, self motion cues to combine information about distance and direction
39
Q

What navigation strategy is supported by grid cells

A

Path integration

40
Q

What is the function of head direction cells

A
  • Give info about direction in an environment
  • Cells fire when facing a specific direction relative to external cues and INDEPENDENT of location
  • Found in a number of structures:
    Postsubiculum and Retroslenial cortex
41
Q

Which brain areas are responsible for:

a) Path integration
b) Route learning
c) Cognitive mapping
d) Location of place cells
e) Grid cells

A

a) Hippocampus and MEC
b) Right caudate nucleus
c) Hippocampus
d) Hippocampus
e) MEC

Neuroscience 3 (10 decks)

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