Physiological Psychology

• The dendrites of a neuron receive incoming signals from other neurons or sensory receptors.
• Learning and memory are two ways of thinking about the same thing: Both are neuroplastic processes that deal with the ability of the brain to change its functioning in response to experience.
• Learning deals with how experience changes the brain, and memory deals with how these changes are stored and subsequently reactivated.
• With dissociative amnesia, the person’s mind rejects thoughts, feelings, or information that they are too overwhelmed to handle.
• People with dissociative amnesia may briefly forget the trauma they went through, either briefly or long-term.
• Dissociative amnesia stems from emotional shock or trauma, such as experiencing or being the victim of a violent crime or experiencing or being the victim of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse.
• Without the ability to learn and remember, we would experience every moment as if waking from a lifelong sleep — each person would be a stranger, each act a new challenge, and each word incomprehensible.
• This module focuses on the roles played by various brain structures in the processes of learning and memory.
• Our knowledge of these roles has come to a great extent from the study of neuropsychological patients with brain-damage-produced amnesia and from research on animal models of the same memory problems.
• Learning refers to a change in behavior, which results from experience.
• Behavioral learning falls into three general categories: classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning.
• Classical conditioning, also sometimes referred to as Pavlovian conditioning, is the most well-known theory of learning and was accidentally discovered by Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov after conducting research on the digestion of dogs.
• In Pavlov's research, dogs appeared to know when it was time for them to be fed, which he confirmed with a simple set-up using five basic variables: unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, neutral stimulus, conditioned stimulus, and conditioned response.
• Memory refers to the psychological processes of acquiring, storing, retaining, and later retrieving information.
• The stage model of memory, initially proposed by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin in 1968, outlines three separate stages or types of memory: sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.
• Encoding is the first stage of memory and involves the initial processing of information entering the memory system.
• Echoic memory, also known as auditory sensory memory, involves a very brief memory of sound a bit like an echo.
• Not all observed behaviors are effectively learned due to factors involving both the model and the learner.
• The ability to pay attention is crucial for learning.
• Storage refers to the process of keeping the information in our memory so that we can access it at a later time.
• Consolidation is the process of stabilizing and organizing encoded information for long-term storage.
• Motivation is necessary for observational learning to be successful.
• Retrieval is the process of recalling or accessing stored information when needed.
• Sensory memory is a very brief memory that allows people to retain impressions of sensory information after the original stimulus has ceased.
• Certain requirements and steps must be followed in the observational learning and modeling process: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation.
• Reproduction is the actual performance of the behavior observed.
• Retention is the ability to store information for later retrieval.
• An unconditioned stimulus (US) is a stimulus or trigger that leads to an automatic response.
• An unconditioned response (UR) is an automatic response or a response that occurs without thought when an unconditioned stimulus is present.
• People with retrograde amnesia cannot remember some or all of their past.
• Post-Traumatic Amnesia (PTA) occurs following a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and involves a period of memory loss and confusion immediately following the injury.
• Functional causes of amnesia are usually related to psychiatric or emotional trauma.
• Source Amnesia, also known as source misattribution, occurs when a person remembers information but cannot recall where or how they acquired that information.
• Childhood Amnesia, also known as infantile amnesia, is the inability to recall early childhood memories, typically before the age of three to four years.
• Retrograde Amnesia is loss of memory for events that occurred prior to the trauma.
• Transient Global Amnesia (TGA) is a temporary, sudden-onset form of global amnesia where an individual experiences a short-term memory loss, often lasting only a few hours.
• A lobotomy is an operation in which a lobe, or a major part of one, is separated from the rest of the brain by a large cut but is not removed.
• Dissociative Amnesia is typically associated with a psychological or emotional cause, such as trauma or stress.
• Neurological Causes of amnesia are caused by various brain diseases, injuries, infections, or other medical conditions.
• Global Amnesia is a rare condition in which a person experiences a sudden and severe loss of both recent and remote memories.