Human Memory Exam 2

*insert neuron and neural structure stuff

Define reductionism and use it to explain why Eric Kandel used sea slugs to study memory (but learning) at the cellular level.

Both tail and siphon have a synapse with the motor neuron

• Touch siphon = gill withdraws

• Shock of tail enhances responsiveness of the motor neuron due to a threatening stimulus

  • Increasing efficacy of motor neuron synapse

Define habituation or sensitization

o   Habituation: decrease in responsiveness due to unreliable or unimportant signal

o   Sensitization: increase in responsiveness due to threatening stimulus

Explain and diagram the neural circuit for how habituation or sensitization is represented at the cellular level

Sensitization: happening by way of interneuron, increasing the likelihood of motor response due to the stimulus being threatening

• Shock to tail excites the interneuron which increases the sensitivity of the motor neuron making it more likely to fire

Define long-term potentiation

Increase in firing in Neuron A -> increase in firing in Neuron B – synapse in Neuron B changes (increase in receptor sites, creating more surface area for signal to bind to) to be better at responding to Neuron A

Explain the laboratory experiments (Lomo (1966) and Morris et al. (1986)) and how they contribute to our understanding LTP at the cellular level.

Lomo = rabbits and hippocampal cell stimulation

• Weakness: all it looked at was hippocampal cells, study does not tell us much about memory at large (no behavioral outcomes)

Explain Morris et al. (1986)) and how they contribute to our understanding LTP at the cellular level and why LTP is an attractive neural model of LTM

Morris = rats in the water maze -> drugs block LTP

-  Drugged rats took longer and more varied paths to platform than control group, suggests that lack of LTP influences LTM abilities

• Unlike rabbits, had behavioral outcomes to support memory

What is the function of the hippocampus?

implicated in the process of holding short term memories and subsequently converting them into long-term memories that are then stored in the cortex

What does the Monkey Circumscribed Lesions study tell us about the function of the hippocampus?

Delayed match to sample = monkey version of familiar faces

-      Train monkeys to choose objects they have seen before a delay interval

-      Variance of delay interval allows for testing of STM and LTM

-      Ability to complete DMTS even without hippocampus due to it being more implicated in the frontal lobe

Delayed not match to sample

-      Train monkeys to choose objects they have NOT seen before a delay interval

-   Performed exactly like LSJ

-   Removed the effects of novelty seeking

-      Demonstrates the hippocampus is implicated in long term recognition memory

What does the Teng and Squire study tell us about the function of the hippocampus?

lack of hippocampus leads to inability to create new spatial long term memories → found by patient EP and his childhood home versus adult home

Explain the relational memory hypothesis

The idea that what you acquire in spatial memory is just the relationships between objects in space as they relate to each other, in that the hippocampus is not doing spatial locations, just object relation

What are subsequent memory fMRI experiments?

a task that is not acknowledged as a memory task until participant is asked to recall stimuli later

How does sensitization work?

Sensitization: happening by way of interneuron, increasing the likelihood of motor response due to the stimulus being threatening

• Shock to tail excites the interneuron which increases the sensitivity of the motor neuron making it more likely to fire