Learning and memory

Plasticity

• The ability of the central nervous system to

adapt or change under the influence of
exogenous or endogenous factors.
• Three main types of plasticity:
– changes in connections that occur after birth, as a
consequence of interactions with the environment;
– changes in connections that occur after injuries;
– changes induced by learning and experience.

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 Developmental plasticity

• Fine-tuning of nervous system connections on

the basis of experience (neuronal activity)
– Selective withdrawal or growth of neuron branches
– Establishing neural circuits (networks) – more
experience, initial decrease in sensory & motor
activity
• Pruning – discarding the unnecessary
• Essential: stimulation and activity

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 Neuronal development in the auditory cortex

Adult cat cortex ≈ fully

Cat cortex at birth ≈
developed human auditory
5-month human fetus
cortex at age 6-8 years 4
 Cochlear and auditory cortex development

Normal cochlear
development →normal
auditory cortex development

Incomplete cochlear
development → impeded
auditory cortex development

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 Developmental plasticity

• Lack of stimulation, activity → delayed or absent

function
– General, cognitive, perceptual and other abilities (see
deprivation)
– Specifically: speech and language – “feral children”

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 Developmental plasticity

Critical (optimal, sensitive) periods

• Periods during which the nervous system is

particularly susceptible to exogneous influences
and learns most easily
• Time span between the onset of an anatomically
or functionally determined biobehavioral system
and its maturation.

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 Developmental plasticity – critical periods

• Comparison with other species – songbirds

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 Critical periods

• In order for a period to be considered “critical” it

must have:
– Identifiable beginning and end
– Intrinsic component – sensitivity to a maturational
event
– Extrinsic component – an external stimulus to which
the organism is sensitive

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 Critical periods

• Prenatal period
– Prematurity, teratogenous agents
• Brain growth spurts
– 3 - 10 mo.
– 2 - 4 y.
– 6 - 8 y.
– 10 - 12 y.
– 14 – 16 y.
• Not all brain areas develop at equal pace

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 Critical periods – neurophysiological basis

• Increased brain activity (glucose consumption)

– To 2 y Adult values (19 – 30 y)
– 3–8y Twice as much as adults
– 9 – 15 y Still more than adults
• Period of inferior P lobe development (intense
until age 2, gradual until 10 y) – Deane: POT
center of body awareness and language
competence  Pansini: spatial grammar
– Language

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 Normal aging

• Reorganization – example: solving a task that

requires selective attention

Young adults: bilateral activity in occipital and

superior parietal areas (visuospatial processing)
Older subjects: decreased activity in posterior
parietal areas, bilateral activation in dorsolateral
prefrontal areas
Areas that become less efficient – functionally
replaced or aided by other resources

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Structural fMRI reveals differences in white matter integrity
between healthy young and older participants. Regions shown in
red-yellow indicate areas where the signal was smaller in older
participants compared to younger ones, and regions in blue
indicate where the signal was larger in the older participants. (From
Ziegler et al, 2008) 13
 Plasticity – recovery after injury

• Recovery depends on
– Age (younger is not always better!)
– Etiology (and rate of lesion development)
– Site and extent of injury
– Rehabilitation
– General health, etc.

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 Plasticity – recovery after injury

• Intrahemispheric reorganization or
interhemispheric transfer?
– Undamaged areas take over
– Limited regeneration of existing neurons (sprouting of
new axon terminals)
– Different strategies

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 Learning→Memory

Encoding Storage Retrieval

Acquisition Consolidation

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 Memory with respect to duration

Sensory Short-term/working Long-term

Milliseconds–seconds Seconds - minutes Days – lifetime

Echoic Iconic Haptic

(auditory) (visual) (tactile)

Sensory memory = traces (unconscious) → short-term/working memory

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 Short-term/working memory

• Accessible to consciousness
• Limited capacity (Miller’s number: 7±2)
– Grouping
• Serial position effects
– Primacy (transfer to long-term m. by repetition)
– Recency (retention in short-term memory)
• Short-term vs. working

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 Working memory (Baddeley)

• Articulatory/Phonological loop – contains and

maintains speech information
– Transient speech storage (the trace remains about
2s) – regardless of input
– Process of articulatory control (subvocal articulation)
– Important for the acquisition of new vocabulary
• Visuospatial sketchpad – short-term storage &
control processes of visuospatial information
– Registering visual and spatial information
– Restoration by repetition (practice)
• Central executive
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 Long-term memory

Declarative Nondeclarative
(explicit, direct) (implicit, indirect)

Episodic Conditioning

Perceptual
Semantic representation
system

Procedural

Nonassociative
learning 22
 Declarative (explicit) memory

• Episodic
– Events, personal
experiences related to
specific time and place
– Autobiographic
• Semantic
– Facts, knowledge

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 Nondeclarative (implicit) memory

• Conditioning
– Classical, instrumental
• Perceptual representation system
– Priming and interference
• Procedural
– Motor and cognitive skills
• Nonassociative learning
– Habituation, sensitization
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 Long-term
memory

Nondeclarative
Declarative (explicit)
(implicit)

Perceptual
Nonassociative
Episodic Semantic Conditioning representation Procedural
learning
system

Events, Facts, Classical, Priming Motor and Habi-

personal know- instrumen and inter- cognitive tuation,
experiences ledge tal ference skills Sensiti-
related to zation
specific time
and place

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 Neural substrates of memory

• Multiple memory systems in the brain

• Healthy subjects: inconclusive results (semantic
vs. episodic in prefrontal areas)
• Motor learning – implicit procedural vs. explicit
• Differences between:
– Men and women
– Pleasant and unpleasant stimuli
• Plasticity
– Declarative learning – remains constant during life
– Nondeclarative learning – best in childhood

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 Green: Working memory
Red: Episodic memory

Red: Working & episodic memory

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 Neural substrates of memory

• Different memory types are affected differently

by injury
• Amnesics – disordered explicit
learning/memory, with preserved procedural
learning capabilities (H.M.)
• Alzheimer’s patients → episodic memory
affected first
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmzU47i2xg
w

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 Hippocampus

• One of key structures in

learning and memory
• Coding new data and
retrieval of recent
information that requires
explicit recall
• Connects details and
traces of episodic
memory and encodes
current experience before
storing into memory

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Relationship between learning and memory

• Results of neural activity

– Short-term: strengthening of synaptic connections
– Long-term: +synthesis of new proteins, gene
activation
• Temporal and categorial structure:
– All chunks of knowledge acquired within the same
time period are stored together
– Information is organized and stored in categories (e.g.
fruits, animals)
• Multiple representations of the same concept or
information
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 Acquisition vs. learning

Acquisition Learning
• by natural modalities, • formal modalities
implicit memory, (rules), institutional
informal environment setting
.

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 Acquisition vs. Learning
Different cerebral structures

Acquisition Learning
• emotional systems, • mainly cerebral
(cortical and cortical areas
.

subcortical
structures),
• language used in
daily life

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