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• Learning


  The process by which new information is acquired for storage
• Properties of learning


  - It is initiated by experience

  - It selects the information that enters into memory

  - Learning filters experience, separating out relevant stimuli for retention
• Memory


  Information extracted from experience and stored for later recovery/use
• Properties of memory


  -it persists after the remembered experience ends.

  -it can enter a latent state before being reactivated by a retrieval process

  -the content of memory reflects the experience that created it.
• Latent state


  long term memory that is stored over a long period
• how does the brain store learned information

  plasticity (can be shaped or altered)
• synaptic plasticity


  the ability of a synapse to change over time through use.

  - altered by experience

  - allows neurons to communicate

  
• Behavioral Neuroscience


  Blends psychological and neuroscientific approaches to understand brain behavior relationships - provides mechanism
• Psychological Approach


  Provides function
• Learning & Memory


  The existence of the two is an inference, but one with great explanatory power
• Eppinghaus & Forgetting Curve


  Tested his own retention of a series of nonsense syllables, and documented the "forgetting curve"
• Consolidation


  Process by which a long term memory stabilizes for storage over an extended period of time.
• Working Memory


  Proposed as a process that is distinct from short and long term memory. " a clear definition of WM is lacking, as is strong evidence for WM as a distinct memory process"
• Patient HM (Henry Molaison)


  Experienced debilitating seizures starting at 16, had surgery to removeepileptic fociat 27. Surgeon removed hismedial temporal lobe, including thehippocampus & amygdala.
• H.M.'s Memory Deficits


  -Intact long term memory-Shallowretrogradeamnesia: he had weak, limited memories of the months prior to surgery-Profoundanterogradeamnesia: he couldn't form new long term memories, though short term memory seemed fine
• Retrieval Cue


  An element of a previous learning experience that when encountered causes remembered information to be reactivated
• Memory Inference


  Prevents the desired or appropriate memory from being retrieved
• Schemas


  Organized structures of knowledge
• Short & Long Term Memory as Processes


  May be independent processes
• Declarative Memory


  -Remembered information can be described using language

  -The memory is explicit, consciously accessible

  -Dr. Claparede plays a mean joke by performing an informal fear conditioning experiment on his amnesia patient (shook her hand with a concealed tack). She was not able to recall the incident but would not shake his hand being afraid to do so.
• Non-Declarative


  -The remembered information cannot be described using language

  -The memory is still implicit, though may still influence conscious experience
• Declarative Memory System


  episodic and semantic
• Episodic Memory


  Term coined in 1972 by Endel Tulving, it is your mental autobiography. (Who, what, when, where, and why in the vents of your life)
• autoneotic consciousness


  Recollection of past events and experiences as well as imagined future events and experiences
• Semantic Memory


  Memory for facts about your environment or the world. It is the distinction between remembering something is true (i am a high school graduate) and consciously recollecting an experience (high school graduation)
• How is non-declarative memory acquired?


  -Pavlovian (stimulus-outcome) learning (Claparede's patient)

  -Instrumental (action-outcome) learning

  -Stimulus-response learning

  -Non-Associative learning (habituation, sensitization)
• Non-Declarative System


  Emotional & Procedural
• Emotional memory


  The emotional 'meaning' or significance of stimuli in the environment
• Procedural memory


  -So called 'muscle-memory'

  -Your implicit memory for how to perform complex tasks (typing, driving, sports, playing an instrument etc)
• KC & HM


  Demonstrate the important dissociations between episodic & semantic (KC), as well as declarative & procedural (HM) memory
• Patient KC


  In motorcycle accident, KC injured hismedial temporal lobeand several subcortical areas. He suffered from profound amnesia for epsiodes (both retro- and anterograde; seemed to lack autonoetic consciousness). Showed in studies that KC could learn & retain word sequences and definitions even though he could not recall learning them.
• retrograde amnesia


  loss of memory from the point of some injury or trauma backwards, or loss of memory for the past
• anterograde amnesia


  the inability to transfer new information from the short-term store into the long-term store (inability to form new memories)
• Synapses


  The functional junction between neurons
• Presynaptic Membrane


  Releases neurotransmitter

  
• Synaptic Cleft


  Space between pre- and post- synaptic cells
• Postsynaptic Membrane


  Contains receptors that respond to neurotransmitter release

  
• The Neuron Doctrine


  Cajal's idea that neurons with this basic structure are the fundamental processing units in the brain

  
• Reticulum Theory


  Developed staining technique. Golgi believed that the brain was not made up of cells, but more like a giant net (reticulum). Also believed that there was no synapses, no spaces between cells, no individual units within the brain. Instead he saw a single, continuous, completely connected web.
• Ionotropic Recepetors


  Channels that open when neurotransmitters bind to them, allowing ions into the neuron