LEARNING, MEMORY, AND AMNESIА

Learning

A process through which experience produces relatively lasting changes in behavior or knowledge.

Memory

The ability to retain and use information acquied through learning.

Amnesia

Significant disruption or loss of memory.

H.M.

- Underwent surgery involving the medial temporal lobes to treat severe epilepsy.

- Proved that memory involves specific brain structures, is not a single unified ability, and different types of memory can be affected independently.

- demonstrated that memory involves different systems.

The Deficit

After surgery, he developed serious difficulty forming certain new long-term memories.

The Preservation

- Intellectual functioning remained relatively intact.

- He could still demonstrate some forms of learning without consciously remembering the learning experience.

Explicit Memory

→ Conscious long-term memory

→ conscious memory.

Implicit Memory

- Long-term memory that does not require conscious awareness

- Conscious memory.

Examples: Learned skills, habits, and conditioned responses.

Episodic memory

Memory for specific personal experiences.

Example: Remembering what happened during your first day of college.

Semantic memory

Memory for facts and general knowledge.

Post-traumatic Amnesia

Memory disruption following a head injury or concussion.

Retrograde Amnesia

- Loss of memories formed before an injury or neurological event

- Recent memories are often more vulnerable than older memories.

- Loss of previously formed memories.

Anterograde Amnesia

- Difficulty forming new memories after an injury or neurological event

- difficulty forming new memories.

Korsakoff's Syndrome

- A memory disorder associated with brain damage related to thiamine deficiency.

- Often associated with heavy alcohol consumption.

- Particularly affects the formation of explicit episodic memories.

Alzheimer's Disease

- A progressive neurological disorder.

- Memory deterioration is often an early sign.

- The condition can eventually progress to dementia.

- Associated with degeneration of the basal forebrain and reduced acetylcholine.

example: person who repeatedly asks the same questions, forgets recent conversations, and gets lost in familiar places

Infantile Amnesia

- Adults generally remember very little from infancy.

- Demonstrates that early-life learning and later conscious remembering are not necessarily the same thing.

example: “My parents talk about our family trip to the beach when I was two, but I have no mental picture of it.”

hippocampus

amygdala

cerebellum

perirhinal cortex

prefrontal cortex

striatum

6 The distributed neurological network of memory

Hippocampus

- New memories and spatial memory.

- Particularly important for forming new memories, spatial memory, navigation, and remembering locations and environments.

- New memories and spatial memory.

Amygdala

- Emotional and fear-related memory.

- Emotional memory.

Cerebellum

Learned sensorimotor skills.

Perirhinal cortex

Object-recognition memory.

Prefrontal cortex

Working memory and organization.

Striatum

Habits and procedural memory.

Grid Cells

- Located in the entorhinal cortex.

- They provide fundamental spatial coordinate information.

Spatial Information

Transmitted from the entorhinal cortex.

Place Cells

Neurons in the hippocampus that become active when an individual is in a particular location.

Place Representation

They help represent the spatial layout of an environment.

Memory Consolidation

The process through which newly formed memories become more stable and resistant to disruption. (New memory → Consolidation → More stable memory)

Standard Consolidation Theory

- New memories initially depend strongly on the hippocampus.

- Over time, memories become increasingly represented in the cortex.

- Older memories become less vulnerable to hippocampal damage.

- stabilizes new memories.

Reconsolidation

- When a stored memory is retrieved, it temporarily becomes unstable and is then stored again.

- During this period, the memory may be susceptible to disruption or modification.

- retrieved memories become temporarily unstable before being stored again.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)

- A long-lasting strengthening of communication between neurons.

- It provides an important model for understanding how learning can produce lasting changes in the nervous system.

- It illustrates how neural connections can strengthen during learning and memory.

Hebbian Principle

Neurons that are repeatedly active together can develop stronger connections.