Learning and Memory

Question 1

Why is it important to study learning in medicine?

Answer 1

• if we understand how behaviour is learned we may be able to change it
• we need to understand how learning may contribute to psychological/psychiatric illnesses

Question 2

What is classical conditioning?

What are the 3 stages?

Answer 2

• also called pavlovian conditioning
• learning a new behaviour by the process of association - in simple terms two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response in a person or animal
  Stage 1: Pre conditioning
• unconditioned stimulus –> unconditioned response
• this stage also involved the neutral stimulus, this neutral stimulus does not produce a response until paired with the unconditioned stimulus
  Stage 2: During conditioning
• the neutral stimulus is paired with the unconditioned stimulus at which point it now becomes the conditioned stimulus
  Stage 3: Post conditioning
• now the conditioned stimulus has been paired with the unconditioned stimulus to create a new conditioned response

Question 3

What is the Little Albert experiment?

Answer 3

• Albert B, 9 months old
• frightened of loud noises, not afraid of white rats
• after classical conditioning developed fear of white rats
• he also developed phobias of animals associated with rats (this is known as generalisation)

Question 4

What are the 3 principles of operant conditioning?

Answer 4

• postive reinforcement
• negative reinforcement
• punishment

Question 5

What is operant conditioning?

Answer 5

behaviour that is reinforced, tends to be repeated and behaviour which is not reinforced tends to die out

Question 6

What a classical and operant conditioning both examples of?

Answer 6

associative learning

Question 7

Think about how classical conditioning and operant conditioning contribute to alcohol misuse/dependence.
How could techniques based on classical and operant conditioning principles be used in treatment?

Answer 7

Classical conditioning = certain cues have powerful affects on addicted people, e.g. an evening watching tv becomes associated with having a bottle of wine
Operant conditioning = reward and behaviour, drinking makes you lose inhibitions and destress

Question 8

What is social learning theory?

Describe the experiment that helped prove this.

Answer 8

Bandura - aggression experiment

• had children watch video of an adult being aggressive towards a clown toy
• children then mimicked that behaviour
• learn by watching other people’s behaviour and its consequences, imitation/modelling,

Question 9

What are the 3 stages of memory?

Answer 9

1. Encoding - exposed to stimulus/knowledge, last a few seconds
2. Storage - hippocampus, medial temporal lobe
3. Retrieval

Question 10

What is the simple model of memory?

Where are these memories stored?

Answer 10

external stimuli –> sensory memory –> STM (frontal/parietal storage)–> LTM (hippocampus)

Question 11

What are the features of short term memory?

Answer 11

limited capacity
short duration
maintenance via rehearsal (working memory)
forgetting via displacement

Question 12

What are the features of long term memory?

Answer 12

unlimited capacity
variable duration
forgetting via interference and decay
cues and context aid retrieval

Question 13

How much of medical consultations do patients remember?

Answer 13

50%

even less of anxious and elderly patients and when prognosis is bad

Question 14

Give an example of the following causes of memory impairment:

• diffuse brain disease
• focal brain disease
• physiological disturbance
• psychiatric illness

Answer 14

• diffuse brain disease –> dementias
• focal brain disease –> amnesias
• physiological disturbance –> delirium
• psychiatric illness –> schizophrenia, depression, anxiety

Question 15

What structures of the brain play a role in memory?

Answer 15

hippocampus
prefrontal cortex
basal forebrain 
mediodorsal nucleus
cerebellum
inferotemporal cortex 
rhinal cortex
amygdala

Question 16

What did patient henry molaison help discover?

Answer 16

removed hippocampi to try and cure epilepsy

–> no ability to form new memories

Question 17

What is anterograde amnesia?

What is retrograde amnesia?

Answer 17

anterograde = cannot remember any new events
retrograde = cannot recall any past events

Question 18

What are the symptoms of anterograde amnesia?

Answer 18

• difficulty learning new information
• may be disorientated and confused
• personality, intelligence and judgement may be unaffected
• will generally have good memory for the past us to time of brain injury
• may have trouble holding a job

Question 19

Draw types of memory tree

Answer 19

google image
LTM 
explicit/implicit 
- declarative 
- procedural 
- episodic vs semantic