Learning and Memory - Chapter 3: Habituation, Sensitization, and Familiarization

Vocabulary flashcards for Chapter 3 of Learning and Memory covering key terms and concepts related to habituation, sensitization, perceptual learning, spatial learning, and their underlying neural mechanisms.

Habituation

A decrease in the strength or occurrence of a behavior after repeated exposure to the stimulus that produces that behavior.

Acoustic startle reflex

A defensive response (such as jumping or freezing) to a startling stimulus (such as a loud noise).

Orienting response

An organism's innate reaction to a novel stimulus.

Dishabituation

The renewal of responding after a new stimulus has been presented following habituation to familiar stimuli.

Spontaneous recovery

A phenomenon in which a stimulus-evoked response that has been weakened by habituation increases in strength or reappears after a period of no stimulus presentation.

Sensitization

A phenomenon in which experiences with an arousing stimulus lead to stronger responses to a later stimulus.

Electrodermal activity (EDA)

A measure of changes in the skin's electrical conductivity caused by fluctuations in the activity of the peripheral nervous system.

Dual process theory

The theory that habituation and sensitization are independent of each other but operate in parallel to determine the strength of responding.

Opponent process theory

A theory assuming that an experienced event leads to two independent emotional or perceptual processes (e.g., one pleasurable and one less pleasant), with their combined result dictating overall response.

Novel object recognition task

A task in which an organism's detection of and response to unfamiliar objects during exploratory behavior are used to measure its memories of past experiences with those objects.

Priming

A phenomenon in which prior exposure to a stimulus can improve the ability to recognize that stimulus later.

Word-stem completion task

A task in which participants fill in the blanks in a list of word stems (e.g., MOT__) to produce the first word that comes to mind, used to study priming.

Perceptual learning

Learning in which repeated experiences with a set of stimuli make those stimuli easier to distinguish.

Statistical learning

Perceptual learning that occurs without explicit training, driven by frequent and consistent exposure to specific percepts.

Spatial learning

The acquisition of information about one's surroundings.

Aplysia

A genus of marine invertebrates (sea hares) with a simple nervous system of approximately 20,000 neurons, widely used as a model system to study neural bases of learning.

Gill-withdrawal reflex

A protective reaction in Aplysia where both siphon and gill are retracted under the mantle when danger threatens or the siphon is touched.

Synaptic depression

A reduction in synaptic transmission that explains habituation in Aplysia.

Homosynaptic

Involving only those synapses that were directly activated during the habituating event.

Heterosynaptic

Involving changes across several synapses, including those that were not directly activated by the sensitizing event.

Receptive field

The range of sensory stimuli that cause a particular cortical neuron to fire.

Cortical plasticity

The capacity for cortical receptive fields and cortical spatial organization to change as a result of experience.

Place cells

Neurons in the hippocampus with spatially tuned firing patterns that fire maximally when an animal enters a specific location.

Place field

The specific preferred location in space to which a place cell responds with maximal activity.

Learned non-use

A phenomenon following a stroke where a patient stops attempting to use a numb or impaired limb over time.

Constraint-induced movement therapy

A motor-rehabilitation technique in which unaffected limbs are restrained to force usage and recovery of dysfunctional limbs.

Cochlear implant

A sensory prosthesis that directly stimulates auditory nerves to produce hearing sensations in deaf individuals.