What does the ‘neurobiology of learning and memory’ field study?
How the brain stores and retrieves information about our experiences
Learning and memory are ____ concepts used to explain the fact that ____
- theoretical
- experience influences behaviour
What are the two different approaches to studying learning and memory?
Psychological and neurological
What is the general goal of the psychological approach to learning and memory?
- Find a set of principles that describe how variation in experience influences behaviour
- Provide a theoretical account that can explain all the observed facts
Who made the study of learning and memory a science, and how?
Hermann Ebbinghaus, by studying his own ability to memorize lists of nonsense syllables
What were the results of Ebbinghaus’s studies?
- Memory is best when list repetitions were spaced
- Performance increases with practice
- Forgetting curve - retention is best right after studying, then quickly declines before levelling out
Psychologists do not ______
directly manipulate or measure brain function
The psychological approach can be described as _____
operating at a single level of analysis
What is the goal of the neurobiological approach to learning and memory?
Relate the basic facts of learning and memory to events happening in the brain?
Which methods must neurobiologists use to study learning and memory?
- Behavioural methods (like psychology)
- Determining regions of the brain that make up the brain system supporting the memory
- Determining how potential storage synapses are altered by experience
- Manipulating and measuring molecules in neurons that support the memory
The _____ century was named the Golden Age of Memory by _____
- Nineteenth
- Paul Rozin
What did Theodule Ribot propose about memory in 1890, and what is this idea also known as?
- That older memories are more resistant than more recent memories in a temporal gradient
- Ribot’s Law
What were Korsakoff’s ideas about the causes of anterograde amnesia?
- Memory storage/consolidation are impaired
- Retrieval deficit (memory is established but cannot be retrieved)
What were William James’s proposed stages of memory consolidation?
After images –> primary memory –> secondary memory (memory proper)
What is the difference between primary and secondary memory?
- Primary is the persisting representation of the experience that forms part of a stream of consciousness
- Secondary contains the record of experiences that had left the stream of consciousness but can later be retreived
James provided a ____ model of memory traces that used the term _____ to describe _____
- Connectionist
- Plasticity
- That the brain may be modified by experience
What did Santiago Ramon y Cahal create, and what does it mean?
The neuron doctrine, which is the idea that the brain is made up of discrete cells called neurons that are the elemental signal units of the brain
What hypothesis is credited to Cahal?
Synaptic Plasticity Hypothesis - the strength of a synaptic connection can be modified by experience
What disorder is named after Kprocorsakoff?
Anterograde amnesia
Cahal believed that plasticity provided a means by which _____
experience could produce the persistent changes in the brain needed to support memories
What is Thorndike’s puzzle box?
An animal is placed in a wooden crate and needs to learn to press a lever to open an escape door
Thorndike’s studies provided the foundation for study of _____
Instrumental learning/Thorndikian conditioning
Thorndike proposed a theory of learning called _____, which holds that _____
- The Law of Effect
- correct behaviour is learned because the consequences of successful outcome strengthen connections between stimulus and correct response, and vice versa
Contemporary neuroscientists believe that the synapse is ____
The fundamental unit of memory storage
