Week 8 Memory and Learning

Question 1

Hippocampi cells are tuned to spatial information, space and grid cells. What are the differences between space and grid cells?

Answer 1

Place cells
- Encode spatial locations
- Become active when organism is moving to a location that has been encoded
- Remaps onto different environments when organism moves to a new environment

Grid cells
- Activate when organism crosses the intersection points of an abstract grid maps of the location environment
- enables navigation and metric (how far and in which direction)
- Similar to encoding latitude and longitude

Question 2

How do place and grid cells reflect individual differences in navigational learning?

Answer 2

Different people have different approaches to navigation: ie. landmarks, (relying more on place cells) or roads, boundaries, borders, (relying more on grid cells)

Question 3

How to test whether HM has retained non-declarative memory?

Findings showed he had nondeclarative memory.

Answer 3

1. Get H.M to repeat the mirror task across many trials across a few weeks
2. Test declarative memory - Ask him what shape he was drawing / or whether he had done this task before.
3. Test non-declarative memory - An improvement in the mirror tracing task would indicate that he has maintained non-declarative memory.

An inability to remember the task would indicate an impairment to declarative memory.

Question 4

What are the 3 ways we learn conscious skills + examples?

Answer 4

1. Sensorimotor - mirror tracing
2. Perceptual - reading mirror-reversed text
3. Cognitive - playing puzzles

Question 5

What impairs skill learning?

Answer 5

Impairment to the Basal-ganglia impairs skill learning

Groups of forebrain nuclei location deep in cerebral hemisphere, involved in learning of motor actions and voluntary movement
Subcortical neurons in the brain below the cerebral cortex
Works with the cerebellum and motor cortex for sensorimotor skill learning

Question 6

What real-life examples use behavioural operant conditioning?

Answer 6

Behaviourism - to reinforce and punish particular behaviours
Used in marketing, getting people to associate products with positive stimuli such as scent or rewards, and gambling, where reinforcement schedules are so enticing for becoming addicted to the prospect of a large reward, leading to spending too much money

Question 7

What are the two arguments to language?

Answer 7

Behaviourist perspective to language: babies are exposed to language, rewarded when they repeat things correctly, increasing their likelihood of repeating the same words again = language acquisition

Chomsky (cognitive revolution) argued for internal mental states that underline language acquisition, reinforcement in world is not enough
Language acquisition needs neural regions to learn language:

1. if you are not exposed to language after first 10 years, you will never learn normal language skills
2. Bilingual people second language is encoded in a completely different part of the brain

Question 8

How to reduce formation and maintenance of PTSD with neurotransmitters?

Answer 8

PTSD = adrenal glands release neurotransmitters strengthening memory formation through the amygdala

1. Cognitive reframing = dampen down the emotional response, Associate it with a positive
2. Block formation: -Inject a block like epinephrine to reduce amygdala response to reduce vividness
3. Stop maintenance: - before they get the amygdala response in recall, inject epinephrine to dampen emotional response

Question 9

Why is smell so evocative of memories?

Answer 9

Because the limbic system and olfactory bulb is next to the amygdala, ie. why smells can be emotionally evocative and linked to emotional memory

Question 9

What are the two ways that brain changes occur?

Answer 9

1. Changes in neural networks
   Structural = increasing connection between cells (white matter)
   Or new brain cells, ie. neurogenesis/plasticity
2. Physiological = results in a greater physiological release (in either pre- or postsynaptic cells)

Question 10

Learning can result in observable changes due to aspects of the environment. How did Draganski show this?

Answer 10

Compared neural density after rats in different environments, found those in enriched neural density, thicker cortex with more neural branches because they could explore and play in their environment and have social interactions with other rats / similar with Maguire (2000)

Question 11

What is Hebbian learning / long-term potentiation and example?

Answer 11

Hebbian learning (1949) / long-term potentiation - (what fires together wires together)
When presynaptic neuron fires with a postsynaptic one, the synaptic connections becomes stronger and more stable

Example - In sleep, hippocampus and neocortex interact to replay recent events, strengthening and consolidating memory