Lecture notes from Imperial College London, Medical Biosciences BSc, 2nd year, Neuroscience (NEU) module.
Learning is the acquisition of new knowledge and skills. Memory is the retention of learned information. We learn and remember lots of different things and it is important to appreciate that...
Learning and Memory
- learning = acquisition of new knowledge and skills
- memory = retention of learned information
Short & long-term memory
-
-
-
In
non-declarative
. .
.
- short-term/ working memory = transient maintenance of info in memory (< 1 min)
=> achieve immediate goal (simultaneous tasks, calculations, understand long sentences...)
=> limited capacity & duration
- long-term memory = store large quantities of information for potentially unlimited duration
The pre-frontal cortex & short-term memory
- primates have a large frontal lobe & highly developed pre-frontal cortex
!
- 1930: delayed response task experiment (cue - delay - response)
=> animal remembers where food is w/ working memory
=> lesion prefrontal cortex impairs performance
=> involved in retaining info in working memory
- Phineas Gage case: lesion in prefrontal cortex
=> sudden behaviour transformation
=> involved in working memory for problem solving & planning of behaviour
- brain activity during delay interval bw memorisation 1: 2:
(1: identity of faces & 2: spacial localisation of faces)
and test phase => prefrontal cortex
, Declarative long term memory
↑
- declarative/ explicit memory: retain facts & events accessible to your consciousness
autobi
=> episodic: learn, store & retrieve info about personal experiences (time, place, details event)
ograp
hical => semantic: knowledge of facts that have been learned (objects categories, history, x tables...)
=> hippocampus + adjacent regions within medial temporal lobe
important for acquisition & storage (min to h)
SEE AF-ER
I
- H.M. case study: removal hippocampus
=> anterograde amnesia (impaired capacity for new learning: no
consolidation declarative m // memories from before & non-d & short-term m remain intact)
- retrograde amnesia: no memory from before (events, identity...) // intact working & non-d memory
also medial temporal lobe & hippo affected => often temporary (except the accident: interrupt consolidation)
autobiographical memory
Non-declarative memory
- non-declarative memory: subconscious behavioural or physiological responses to events or stimuli
=> skills & habits (swimming, riding...) => striatum, motor areas, cerebellum
=> emotional memory/ association (change in behaviour as a result of an experience) => amygdala
=> conditioned reflexes (Pavlov’s dog experiment) => cerebellum (acquisition + consolidation)
=> stronger memory
when emotional stimuli
Classical conditioning
- unconditioned stimulus (= normal): food
=> unconditioned response: salivation dog
- conditioned stimulus (neutral stimulus before training): bell
=> conditioned response: salivation dog => association made
Spatial memory
- hippocampus also important in spatial memory of the location of objects
=> Morris water maze experiment: rodents learn to find a platform in water within a few sessions
=> fail to learn location if bilateral hippocampal lesion
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