Learning and Memory

-Ramayana B. Lao

Learning
Is the acquisition and storage of information as a consequence of experience It is measured by an increase in the likelihood of a particular behavioral response to a stimulus. Crucial ingredients:

Rewards and punishments Contact with and manipulation of the environment

Memory
Is the relatively permanent storage form of the learned information It is not a single, unitary phenomenon. Rather, the brain processes, stores and retrieves information in different ways to suit different needs

Memory encoding
Defines the processes that mediate between an experience and the memory of that experience. The physiological events that lead to memory formation. Two broad categories of Memory: Declarative memory Nondeclarative memory

Declarative Memory

is involved in answering the question, what is it, or when and where did it happen? is based on ones past experience

Required for the formation of DM Hippocampus Amygdala diencephalon

Nondeclarative memory

Includes Procedural Memory

the memory of how to do things it is the memory for skilled behaviors independent of any understanding Example: riding a bicycle
Individuals can suffer severe deficits in declarative memory but have intact procedural memory.

Nondeclarative memory

Also includes:
learned emotional responses
fear of thunder

Pavlovs dog

Primary areas of the brain involved: Sensorimotor cortex Basal ganglia cerebellum

Working Memory

Also known as Primary or Short-term memory Registers and retains incoming information for a short time (a matter of seconds) after its input. It is the memory that we use when we keep information consciously in in mind.

Neural Basis of Learning and Memory

Prefrontal cortex of the frontal lobes, is active in both the storage and executive processes of working memory, but discrete regions of prefrontal cortex deals with specific kinds of information. PC is also the destination of major branch of the mesolimbic dopamine pathway, a pathway mentioned earlier in the context of directed attention.

Directed Attention
is a critical component of the working memory. We do not remember what we have not paid attention to.

Dopamine
is a major neurotransmitter implicated in directed attention Drugs that are dopamine antagonists (e.g.
drugs such as those used in schizophrenia)

interfere with working memory.

Conditions which interfere with the electrical activity of the brain:

Coma Deep anesthesia Electroconvulsive shock Insufficient blood supply to the brain

- interfere with the working memory

- thus it is assumed that working memory requires ongoing graded or action potentials.

Working memory is interrupted when a person becomes unconscious from a blow on the head, and memories are abolished for all that happened for a variable of time before the blow, socalled retrograde amnesia.

Long-Term Memory

can survive deep anesthesia , trauma, or electroconvulsive shock, all of which disrupt the normal patterns of neural conduction in the brain.

Long-term potentiation (LTP)

certain synapses undergo a long-lasting increase in their effectiveness when they are heavily used. results from increased activation of glutamate receptors on the postsynaptic cell, which opens Ca2+ channels in the

The calcium enhances the enzymatic formation in the postsynaptic cell of nitric oxide, which diffuses back across the synapse to enhance the effectiveness of the synapse. Long-term depression (LTD)

An analogous process Decreases the effectiveness of synaptic contacts between neurons. It is generally accepted that that memory encoding involves processes that alter gene expression and result in the synthesis of new proteins.

Additional facts concerning Learning and Memory

Certain types of learning depend not only on factors such as attention, motivation, and various neurotransmitters but also on certain hormones. Memories can be encoded very rapidly, sometimes after just one trial, and they can be retained over extended periods.

Atrophies with lack of use is not always true.

Unlike working memory, memory storage apparently has unlimited capacity.

Peoples memories never seem to be so full that they cannot learn something new.