Week 1

Question 1

What does the ‘neurobiology of learning and memory’ field study?

Answer 1

How the brain stores and retrieves information about our experiences

Question 2

Learning and memory are ____ concepts used to explain the fact that ____

Answer 2

• theoretical

- experience influences behaviour

Question 3

What are the two different approaches to studying learning and memory?

Answer 3

Psychological and neurological

Question 4

What is the general goal of the psychological approach to learning and memory?

Answer 4

• Find a set of principles that describe how variation in experience influences behaviour
• Provide a theoretical account that can explain all the observed facts

Question 5

Who made the study of learning and memory a science, and how?

Answer 5

Hermann Ebbinghaus, by studying his own ability to memorize lists of nonsense syllables

Question 6

What were the results of Ebbinghaus’s studies?

Answer 6

• Memory is best when list repetitions were spaced
• Performance increases with practice
• Forgetting curve - retention is best right after studying, then quickly declines before levelling out

Question 7

Psychologists do not ______

Answer 7

directly manipulate or measure brain function

Question 8

The psychological approach can be described as _____

Answer 8

operating at a single level of analysis

Question 9

What is the goal of the neurobiological approach to learning and memory?

Answer 9

Relate the basic facts of learning and memory to events happening in the brain?

Question 10

Which methods must neurobiologists use to study learning and memory?

Answer 10

• Behavioural methods (like psychology)
• Determining regions of the brain that make up the brain system supporting the memory
• Determining how potential storage synapses are altered by experience
• Manipulating and measuring molecules in neurons that support the memory

Question 11

The _____ century was named the Golden Age of Memory by _____

Answer 11

• Nineteenth

- Paul Rozin

Question 12

What did Theodule Ribot propose about memory in 1890, and what is this idea also known as?

Answer 12

• That older memories are more resistant than more recent memories in a temporal gradient
• Ribot’s Law

Question 13

What were Korsakoff’s ideas about the causes of anterograde amnesia?

Answer 13

• Memory storage/consolidation are impaired

- Retrieval deficit (memory is established but cannot be retrieved)

Question 14

What were William James’s proposed stages of memory consolidation?

Answer 14

After images –> primary memory –> secondary memory (memory proper)

Question 15

What is the difference between primary and secondary memory?

Answer 15

• Primary is the persisting representation of the experience that forms part of a stream of consciousness
• Secondary contains the record of experiences that had left the stream of consciousness but can later be retreived

Question 16

James provided a ____ model of memory traces that used the term _____ to describe _____

Answer 16

• Connectionist
• Plasticity
• That the brain may be modified by experience

Question 17

What did Santiago Ramon y Cahal create, and what does it mean?

Answer 17

The neuron doctrine, which is the idea that the brain is made up of discrete cells called neurons that are the elemental signal units of the brain

Question 18

What hypothesis is credited to Cahal?

Answer 18

Synaptic Plasticity Hypothesis - the strength of a synaptic connection can be modified by experience

Question 19

What disorder is named after Kprocorsakoff?

Answer 19

Anterograde amnesia

Question 20

Cahal believed that plasticity provided a means by which _____

Answer 20

experience could produce the persistent changes in the brain needed to support memories

Question 21

What is Thorndike’s puzzle box?

Answer 21

An animal is placed in a wooden crate and needs to learn to press a lever to open an escape door

Question 22

Thorndike’s studies provided the foundation for study of _____

Answer 22

Instrumental learning/Thorndikian conditioning

Question 23

Thorndike proposed a theory of learning called _____, which holds that _____

Answer 23

• The Law of Effect
• correct behaviour is learned because the consequences of successful outcome strengthen connections between stimulus and correct response, and vice versa

Question 24

Contemporary neuroscientists believe that the synapse is ____

Answer 24

The fundamental unit of memory storage

Question 25

For synapses to support memory, they need to be _____

Answer 25

Plastic or modifiable

Question 26

What does ‘multiple memory systems’ mean?

Answer 26

Different kinds of information are processed and stored in different parts of the brain

Question 27

The neuron is composed of which three parts?

Answer 27

• Cell body
• Axon
• Dendrites

Question 28

The points of connection between neurons are called

Answer 28

Synapses

Question 29

What is the Law of Dynamic Polarization?

Answer 29

Electricity flows through the neuron in one direction

Question 30

Golgi developed a method that _____

Answer 30

Allowed neurons to be visualized

Question 31

What is reticulum theory?

Answer 31

The nervous system is an exception to cell theory - organized as a network instead of individual cells