Memory and learning Flashcards
Learning
the process of acquiring new and relatively enduring information, behavioral patterns, or abilities, characterized by modifications of behavior as a result of practice, study, or experience.
Memory
1) The ability to retain information, based on the mental process of earning or encoding, retention across dome interval of time, and retrieval or reactivation of the memory.
2) The specific information that is stored in the brain.
Representation
The world is represented in the mind and in the brain.
- At a neural level, representations are patterns of activation across units in a neural net.
- Stored representations are believed to depend on the configuration of weights connections between units.
Amnesia
severe impairment of memory
Retrograde amnesia
difficulty of retrieving memories formed before the onset of amnesia.
Anterograde amnesia
Inability to form new memories beginning with the onset of a disorder.
Korsakoff syndrome
memory disorder, related to a thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency, generally associated with chronic alcoholism
Declarative memory
memory that can be stated or described.
- Facts (semantic)
- Events (episodic)
Non-declarative (or implicit or procedural) memory
memory that is shown by performance rather than by conscious recollection.
Skills memory
Basal ganglia, cerebellum, and motor cortex.
–> Mirror tracing task/mirror reversed text reading: the amnesic subject is asked to draw a star based on what he sees in the mirror. They gets better at it over time, making less errors, but he did not remember about it.
Priming
Phenomenon by which exposure to a stimulus facilitates subsequent responses to the same or similar stimulus.
–> Priming task: the subject is shown a list of words and has to recall them in three ways (free recall, cued recall, and completion). Amnesic patents are increasingly goof at recalling words in the order in these 3 ways.
Associative learning
type of learning in which an association is formed between two stimuli or between a stimulus and a response.
Cognitive map
mental representation of a spatial relationship → hippocampus plays a crucial role.
Place cells
neurons within the hippocampus that selectively fires when the animal is in a particular location → becomes active when in, or moving toward, a particular location.
–> Taxi drivers experiment: London taxi drivers have a different organization of the hippocampus with anterior parts smaller and posterior parts larger → plastic changes.
The system for creating and retaining memories consists of three general stages:
1) Encoding of raw information from sensory channels → central role of the hippocampus.
2) Consolidation and storage of the memories.
- Permanent storage of information tends to be in the regions of the cortex where the information was first processed and held in short-term memory (visual, auditory…).
3) Retrieval of the stored information for use in future behavior
- The hippocampus retrieves information from the various cortex and put them all together and make a memory.
- For remote memory, the hippocampus is not needed anymore, cause the connections are already established.
