Exam 4: Learning & Memory 2

Tuesday, April 10, 2012 6:30 PM

1. Some people believe spatial learning is part of item relation. 2. Procedural memory: H.M. (patient who has permanent anterograde amnesia without hippocampus), this memory is intact (successfully draw mirror image over time and practice). a. After practice, you get better at it. 3. Habit memory/response learning: combination of spatial learning and procedural learning. We start out with spatial learning and it gets transferred into procedural learning or habit memory. a. Example is learning a new route b. Experiment: food is always on the left side, rat gets dropped off-> goes to left i. At the beginning, rats and humans: use spatial information around the maze to find something 1) Remember what's around this area, relationship between spatial cues and food 2) Left turn, regardless of what's around, making a left turn (left turn or response strategy) ii. Test: move animal on opposite side 1) Spatial strategy: even though the animal's dropped off on other size of maze, still gets food cues 2) Response strategy: goes to the left c. Stratum, basal ganglia structure, heavy dopamine input i. Stratum seems to be important for habit learning 1) Majority of the animals used spatial strategy to find the food when tested 8 days later 2) By 16 days, the majority of the animals used left turn strategy ii. Data shows that in normal cases, at the beginning of learning something (a particular location) we employ spatial strategy, b ut if we do this over and over again, we use habit/response strategy. iii. Lidocain is sodium blocking channel, shuts down region where lidocaine goes, local anesthesia. Lidocaine into stratum right before animals were tested --> spatial strategy 1) Lidocaine after training 16 days--> not able to use habit strategy of left turn, go back to using spatial strategy iv. Need stratum to do habit memory related tasks 4. Classical conditioning a. Hippocampus--declarative to long term storage, spatial strategy b. Stratum--habit type learning c. Dog-->plate of food (US)-->dog salivates i. Salivation is UR, automatic response to it d. Ring bell (CS)-->give dog food (US)--> salivation i. Neutral CS e. After time, bell (CS)--> salivation (CR) f. Conditioned stimulus modifies response to US and acquires the response g. Neutral stimulus at beginning doesn't induce a response, but after doing the pairing over and over, salivation occurs to the tone of the bell h. Have to do multiple pairings 5. Classical fear conditioning--give shock instead of food a. One-time pairing is strong b. High levels of emotion-->large influence on learning process c. Experiment: rat is put in a cage-->present light (sometimes animals will be conditioned to the context, room itself)-->shock-->freeze i. Measure physiological: ultrasonic vocalization 20KHz range (aversive), heart rate goes up ii. The more you conduct is--> stronger conditioning d. Later-->test how much the animals have learned simply by playing the tone, response to tone itself. e. Amygdala (part of limbic system)--crucial for classical fear conditioning. i. Amygdala is composed of many different subnuclei, but the main function is that the auditory information (tone) or light info , or contextual info, and sensory information (foot shock) makes way to basal lateral amygdala (association occurs here) --> information goes to central amygdala-->brain stem areas responsible for controlling physiological responses 6. Eye blink conditioning-- cerebellum a. Occurs in cerebellum (motor function, fine motor movement and timing) b. UR (blinking), CR (blinking to bell) c. At first, go through a series of motor nuclei and blink d. After conditioning, bell-->taps into eye blink circuitry and induces eye blink e. Graph: timeline. Gray to black or blue, looks at muscle movement. At the beginning of this conditioning, when tone comes out, no blink, air puff-->blink, muscle movement i. Blue--starting to show CR. Before the presentation of air puff, start to blink (move eye muscles) f. Knock out cerebellum--no response g. PTX temporarily shuts down brain area, infused to cerebellum-->no CR 7. Instrumental (operant) conditioning--not classical a. Instrumental conditioning: make a response in order to get an outcome. i. Response --> outcome ii. If the animal doesn't make a particular or specific response, nothing happens iii. For rat to get food--> has to press the lever iv. Positive reinforcement/Appetitive training: response produces positive reinforcement 1) Increase response rate v. Punishment/Aversive training: response produces aversive outcome 1) Reduce response rate vi. Negative reinforcement: response removes aversive outcome 1) Increase response rate vii. Omission training: response removes positive outcome 1) Less response rate b. Classical conditioning: animal doesn't have to do anything in order to get food, independent of learner's response

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b. Classical conditioning: animal doesn't have to do anything in order to get food, independent of learner's response 8. Reinforcers a. Primary reinforcers (food, shelter, mating, drinking: basic needs to survive, we're driven to seek this)--> secondary (conditioned) reinforcers (to obtain primary reinforcers). 9. Types of memory: durability a. Short term: shot living but strong (accurate) b. Intermediate term memory: c. Long term memory: takes a long time to get build, but if you're successful at consolidating, can be pretty strong

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