learning and memory exam 1

three uses of memory

1- record (memory trace or engram)

2- storage facility (where you put info)

3- process (restreive/reconstruct)

learning definition

a change in the POTENTIAL of people to alter their behavior because of experience of regularities in the enviroment

(more operant/studied in animals)

some aspects for memory

recorder of experience, organized storage, interconnections, jumbled storage, temporal availability, content addressability, forgetting of details, reconstruction, active processing

who came up with the birds in an aviary metaphor for memory

plato

what metaphor dominates cognitive psych

computer

Plato

rationalist

dualist (believed mind and body were separate)

was tablet and aviary metaphor

aristotle

empiricist (expereince)

was platos student

came up with laws of association:

-simiilariity

-contrast

-contiguity

mind in the heart

St. Augustine

good description of memory in his Confessions

Robert Hooke

good insights into memory

ignored as he was over-shadowed by Newton

Darwin and NS

organism changes to adapt to the enviroment

said its easier to remember thinngs related to survival compared to other info

Empiricists

knowledge through observation

associationsim (how one memory leads to another memory)

most info is based on what youve been exposed to

Rationalists

knowledge through theories

active involvement of the mind

you try to impose how you think onto the world

(ex = domers are better than all other schools)

Hermann Ebbiinghaus

first memory researcher

did the nonsense syllables

found the learning curve (distributed and massed practice)

-the amount of gain as you learn becomes smaller and smaller

-forgetting curve

overlearning (causes forgetting curve to become less and shorter retrieval time)

savings (how much effort was needed to get back to some level of knowledge)

Frederick Bartless

-prior knowledge influences memory

-use of schemas

-given stories that are kinda random… you remember them how they should be remembered due to schema

William James

Punctualist

primary (thinking of at the moment) and secondary memory (not thinking of at the moment)

-tip of the tongue phenomenon

gestalt movement

the whole is DIFFERENT then the sum of iits parts

(ex = memories require neurons but neurons aren’t memories)

annti reductionistic

-acknowledged the importance of understanding the components of thought (easier to remember things in the context you learned them rather than other things)

-memory is influenced by a configuaration of elements and contexts

-isomorphism of mental representationn

behaviorism

psychology should study observable behavior

-was reaction to introspection

associated with the term learning

influenced by darwinian concepts of evolutiion

a lot of behaviorists study animals

-reaction to Titchner

early behaviorists

pavlolv, thorndike (law of effect and instrumental conditioning), and tolman (mental maps)

Edward Tolman

mental maps

verbal learning

behaviorists approach to learniing verbal materials (tied to Ebbinghaus)

memorization = attachment of responses to stimuli

forgetting = loss of response availiabilty

Mary Calkins

paired associate learninig

how learning one thing influences something else

Karl Lashley

early neuroscience

search for the engram (looking for where the memory track is at in the brain)

rats learned a maze

removed larger and larger portions of rat’s brains, from different location

memory affected by how much tissue was removed, not the location

memories are distributed

they arent in one location… you’re using all of your brain all of the time

Donald Hebb

Wrote the organization of Behavior

forerunner of computational neurosciience

signal reverberation in cell assemblies followed by a change in neural connections

-Ai is based on this work

-neurons that fire together wire together

cognitive revolution

thought is a valid subject for study

associated with the term memory

kept methodological rigor of behaviorstis

the computer metaphor

focuses on observables

George Miller

limited capacity of memory

said organizationn aids memory

wrote, the magical number seven plus or minus two

modal model of memory

the standard model of memory

four components

1-sensory registers

2- short term

3- long term

4- control

multiple memory systems

long term memory has several sub-components

different memory systems for different types of information

Tulvings Triarchic Theory

episodic memory builds on semantic memory builds on nondeclarative (procedural) memory

squires hierarchy

LTM broken into non declarative (procedural and implicit) and declarative (semantic and episodic)

multiple memory sources

fuzzy trace theories

when you’re using many memories to try to figure something out

embodied cognition

memory influenced by contexts of learning and memory, memory needs to operate in real time, memory is influenced by how we interact with the world

memory is an emergent property

not a property of indivudal neurons

WORKS TOGETHER

neuronal transmission is detected through

EEG

you DO NOT want all of your neurons

firing at the same time ok

how far apart is a synapse

100-200 angstroms

Ach

enhances the strength of synaptic potentials

Glut

EXC for forming memories

GABA

INH for forminig memories

Norepi

memory consolidation (making mems permament)

dopamine

critical to memory processing

LTP

irrelevant connectionns are pruned away and useful connections grow stronger

-takes several stages of LTP to fully form

happens a lot when you sleep

discovered by training rabbits

goes away after about 7 days

dissipatiion is likely due to interference

new info disrupts LTP formed memories

longer an LTP has been around, the more likely it is to be distrubed

Long Term Depression

weakening of neuronal connections in response to experience

temporary (may last for several days)

-makes neural connections waker

what lobe is most important for memory

temporal

what are the numbered areas in the brain called

brodmann

occipital lobes are not

developed upon birth

parietal lobes

often involved in working memory, things you’re actively thinking about, important for visual imagery and naviagatiion through space

temporal lobes

adjacent to hippo, major location of memory storage, damage can result in loss of some memoriies

caudal frontal lobe

premotor

mid frontal lobe

contexual

rostral frontal lobe

schematic

default mode network

active when people are mind-wandering

hippocampus

memory encoding

-ordering, location, timing, context, etc…

conscious memories

damage leads to amnesia

a way-station for permanent storage

LTP

amygdala

near the hippocampus

important for emotional aspects of memory

area CA1 and CA3 in hippo does

declarative memory

hippocampal processes - pattern separation

during encoding

segregating memories

event boundaries

dentate gyrus

hippocampal processes - pattern completion

during retrieval

getting the whole from partial traces

area CA3

fill in the gaps in memory

basal ganglia

non-conscious memories, habits and skills

nucleus accumbens detects unexpected events and triggers further processing in the hippocampus

cerebellum

more complex than the cortex

important for motor skill memmories

CT scans

also called CAT scans

X-ray slices of the brain

many images are taken and assembled by computer

good spatial resolution

no temporal resolution

good for structural info but not processing info

MRI Scans

takes advantage of atom resonant frequencies

water molecule density is often used

excellent spatial resolution, clearer than CT

no temporal resolution

less disruptive but more expensive

can not be used if you have metal inside of you

Wilder Penfield

Canadian neurosurgeon who would use electrical wire in surgery

the brain prob produced the memories because it hates random firing

single cell recordings are often done with

animals

iEEG recordiingns

initracranial electroencephalography

-electrodes embedded in clinical patients (epilepsy)

-each electrode can record cell assemblies of 200k-500k neurons

ERP recordings

come from EEG

stands for Event Related Potentials

in reference to a known event

excellent temporal resolution

relatively poor spatial resolution

know when things are happening millisecond to millisecond

will record multiple trials because there is so much noise (need to be averaged)

ERD Measures

Event Related Desynchronization

-groups of neurons tend to oscillate togetther…. neurons randomly put togetther in a dish will eventually naturally fire together

-oscillations occur at different frequency bands based on a persons reference point

-when there is concerted mental activity, changes in synchronization can occur

oscillations of delta

-8 to -6 hz

oscillations of thetta

-6 to -4 hz

lower 1 alpha

-4 to -2 hz

lower 2 alpha

-2 to 0 hz

upper alpha

0 to 2 hz

ERD measures of memory retrieval

increased theta synchronization

decreased alpha synchronization

-inhibition and timing of certain activites

TMS

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

-magnetic coils held over the scalp

-a magnetic pulse delivered to a targeted brain region (stimulates those neurons and temporarily causes lesions)

-processing affected in target region

tDCS measures

transcranial diiect current stimulation

-electrodes attached to the scalp

-DC current delivered to targeted brain region (9 volt battery)

processing affected in targeted region

MEG scans

magnetoencephalography

-magnetic fields are used to measure cortical activity

-better spatial resolution than EEG/ERPs

-temporal resolution not as good EEG/ERP, but still pretty good (10ms)

-records the changes in magnetic field as the result of neural firing

-expensive

-produces little movies

blood flow measures

assessment of memory made by identifying where blood is going, blood flows to areas that are working harder

PET scanns

Position Emission Tomography

-record cerebral blood flow

-subject is injected with O15 (radioactive) that travels through the bloodstream

-more active areas light up the screen

good spatial resultiion

poor temporal resolution

fMRI Scans

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Assesses change in oxygen molecule locations over time

-fantastic spatial resolution

-good temporal resolution

-use voxels as units of measurements

studying special populations with altered brains

works good for people who have regular defecits

Alzheimers, Korsakoffs, Children/Elderly

deviations can be more extensively tested

memory and pregnancy

pregnancy increases memory wow

THE PURPOSE OF MEMORY IS

FOR PLANNING NOW AND IN THE FUTURE

Consolidation can be disrupted by

retrograde amnesia

consolidation locations

a lot can happen in hippocampus (easy to disrupt and fast) but it moves to the cortex (slow and safer/more permanent)

consolidation is increased through

physical activity

-exercise

-dancing

-playing instruments

synaptic consolidation

occurs ini the hippocampus via LTP

synaptically consolidated memories may be retained for a few days or weeks

systems consolidation

wider consolidation in larger brain systems

systems consolidated memories may be retained for decades

fast mapping consolidation

some cortical consolidation may occur quickly without going through the hippocampus

-more likely when there is substantional semantic overlap (when it overlaps with things you know already)

reconsolidation

during retrieval memories are plastic again, and can be changned

neurogenesis is increased when you

learn

so expose yourself to new things in life ok

also your hippocampus can physically become larger

hypothesis vs theory

hypothesis = guess that tests a theory or an educated guess based on theory

theory = explanation of WHY, may or many not have evidence

pre-registration

say ahead of your experiment what predictions you’re gonna make

-but you can still look at your data in different ways after the fact

power analysis

make sure you have enough data to detect the effects you’re interested in

meta-analysis

one individual study tells you not a lot but looking at lots of studies togehter, gives you a better esitmate of effect size

correlation study

measuring dependednt variables as a function of pre-existiing values

quasi-experiment

preexisting values combined with controlled assignment of independent variables

case studies

idiosyncratic conditions (unique)

incidental learninng

person unaware that memory will be tested

(not actively trying to memorize the info)

intentional learning

person aware of the memory test

-leads to elaborative processing (= taking info and doing something with it)

rote rehearsal vs elaborative rehearsal

rote = shallow processinig (just repeating info over and over)

elaborative = deep procesing (and better memory)

imagery leads to better memory

mental images require effort and lead to elaborative processing

-form mental images (requires effort)