Non associative and associative learning and memory (27/11)

Question 1

What is ‘learning’?

Answer 1

Acquisition of new knowledge or an altered behavioural response to an environmental stimulus

Question 2

What is ‘memory’?

Answer 2

Process through which learned information is stored and retained

Question 3

What is ‘recall’?

Answer 3

Conscious or unconscious retrieval process by which this knowledge or altered behaviour is shown

Question 4

What is ‘declarative memory’?

Answer 4

Memory relating to facts and events

Question 5

What is ‘non-declarative memory’?

Answer 5

Working memory

Question 6

What is short term memory also known as?

Answer 6

Working memory

Question 7

Outline the model for working memory.

Answer 7

Question 8

What is the ‘central executive’ dependent on?

Answer 8

Attention ‘regulator’

Question 9

What is the ‘visuospatial sketchpad’?

Answer 9

It stores and processes information ina visual and spatial form

Question 10

What is the phonological loop?

Answer 10

A part of working memory that deals with spoken and written material

Question 11

A. What is the episodic buffer?

B. How can we use this information and information from the other two buffers in terms of memory?

Answer 11

A. It is a buffer that integrates information from other components and used to maintain a sense of time

B. For comparison of long term memory

Question 12

What are the key findings from Goldam and Rakic short term memory task in monkey’s?

(Task was: fixation, cue, delay, saccade. Signal comes on, animals look at where stimulus is on screen)

Answer 12

1. Pre-frontal cortex - see firing of neuron at cues
2. Neuron fire at different points in task - preferentially during saccade
3. Sometime fire more preferentially in delay period - holds onto information that goes to intermediate of LTM stores
4. Co-ordinated activity in sparse network of neurons

Above implies sparse reverberation and network of activation for short period of time

Question 13

What do prefrontal neurons having opponent fields show in Goldam and Rakic experiment?

Answer 13

Shows rate of firing in delay period is enhanced, for one target location, and inhibited during delay on trials with target stimuli of opponent polarity

Question 14

What is the Wisconsin sorting card task?

Answer 14

Where you have to sort cards by colour, shape and number

Question 15

How can you measure brain activity of Wisconsins card sorting task in humans?

Answer 15

fMRI

Question 16

Where and when do you see peak activity in the human brain in the Wisconsin card sorting task?

Why is that?

Answer 16

Dorsal lateral pre-frontal cortex - occurs when subject gets feeback

Happens as teh current information is being related to earlier events

Question 17

In terms of STM what is ‘iconic’ and ‘echoic’?

Answer 17

Iconic refers to visual sensory memory and echoic refers to auditory sensory memory

Question 18

What are some of the features of STM and working memory?

(3 marks)

Answer 18

• Temporary (~10 secs)
• Limted capacity
• Requires attention adn rehearsal and is vulnerable to disruption (change in attention)

Question 19

What is the process of STM changing into LTM?

Answer 19

• Diagram below meant to show that senory infromation geos into a sustained neural circuit activity. This will either give ‘output’ as STM and be forgotten, or recevie input from STM to be consolidated and form LTM.

Arrow that is above STM and that means infromation is forgotten

STM (arrows that go between this and sustained)

Sensory information –> Sustained neural circuitry –> Consolidation –> LTM

Question 20

What are the types of declartive memory and are they explicit or implicit?

Answer 20

Semantic e.g. countires, and Episodic e.g. ‘what, where and when’

Both these forms are explicit declarative

Question 21

What are forms of non-declarative memory and are they implicit or explicit?

Answer 21

• Learnt emotional responses
• Habits and procedural memory
• Classical conditioning
• Skeletal musculature

These are all IMPLICIT nad require repition and practise to learn

Question 22

What is an engram?

Answer 22

• Cognitive unit within the brain that is theorized to be the mean in which memory is stored as biophysical and biochemical changes in the brain

Question 23

What is the phrase used when all cortical areas are shown to contribute to memory storage?

Answer 23

MASS ACTION

Question 24

What was Hebb’s postulate for an engram? (4 marks)

Answer 24

• If an external stimulus was presented, you would get an activation of anumber of neurons in the brain leading to reverberatory loop of activation
• Reverberating activity will lead to ‘growth process’
• After stimulus has gone away the connections of the cells will be strengthened
• After learning, partial activation of assembly leads to activation of entire representation of stimulus

Question 25

What does reveraberation mean?

Answer 25

That cells are reciprocally interconnected - continuous loop of connectivity

Question 26

What is meant by ‘cell assembly’?

Answer 26

Simultaneously active neruons. Consolidation by ‘growth processes’. ‘fire together wire together’

Question 27

What sort of role is the meidal temporal lobe hypothesised to play in declarative memory?

Answer 27

Involved in dreams, hallucinations, memories

Question 28

What strucutres in the brain are essential for memory retrieval?

Answer 28

Amygdala and hippocampus

Question 29

What are the 3 main memory systems, the brain structures that support them, and the type of memory they ‘store’?

Answer 29