Learning and Memory

1. Learning and Memory

2. Brain functions • Attention • Consciousness • Decision making • Executive functions • Language • Learning • Memory • Motor coordination • Perception • Planning • Problem solving • Thought

3. Learning • An increase in knowledge or skills • Memory: ability to successfully recall information and experiences • Meaningful piece of information: bit

4. Learning • Is based on memory (Storage and retrieval) • Memory relies on learning • Suggested mechanism: Changes in neuronal synapses. Long term potentiation and long term depotentiation (Donald Hebb) • Secondary and tertiary sensory areas connect with hippocampus for further processing and memory consolidation

5. Types of Learning • Associative learning: An association between two stimuli or a behavior and a stimulus is learned • Non-associative learning: A relatively permanent change in the strength of response to a single stimulus due to repeated exposure. • Habituation • Sensitization

6. Associative Learning • Classical Conditioning: A previously neutral stimulus is repeatedly presented together with a reflex eliciting stimuli until eventually the neutral stimulus will elicit a response on its own • Operant Conditioning: A certain behavior is either reinforced or punished which results in an altered probability that the behavior will happen again

7. Classical Conditioning • Smell of a food stimulates salivary glands (unconditioned stimulus), salivation is the unconditioned response • Pavlov presented an alarm ring during feeding dogs, and observes secretion of salivary glands. After some while, salivary glands begin secretions with an alarm stimulus. Alarm stimulus is then conditioned stimulus, and secretion is conditioned response

8. Observational Learning • A persons repetition of a behavior, becomes skilled in a time. • Children learn from their caregivers by observing • Mirror neurons are important for OL

9. Theories of Learning • Cognitive • Behaviorist • Biological basis

10. Memory • Encoding, storing and recalling processes • Different information types may require different procedures in the brain • That means we have different types of memory storage

11. Sensory memory • Keeps sensory information for a few seconds. It is out of cognitive control • Iconic memory: Visual sensory memory • Echoic memory: Auditory sensory memory • Haptic memory: Sensory memory for touching sense

12. Atkinson-Shiffrin Model Input Sensory information Selective attention Short-term memory Successfully coded for storage Long-term Memory

13. Short-term memory (STM) • Storing small amount of information briefly • Sensitive to interference • Scratch-pad of the working memory is a part • Selective attention: Focusing on a selected portion of sensory input • Phonetic storage: Storing by sound • Storing auditory information is easier

14. Short-term Memory • 7 items (±2) can be stored • Recoding: Reorganizing or modifying information in the STM • We can use abbreviations, mnemonics and store a cluster of information together • Maintenance Rehearsal: Repeating information silently to prolong its presence in STM • Short-term memory is supported by transient patterns of neuronal communication, dependent on regions of the frontal lobe (especially dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and the parietal lobe.

15. Long-Term Memory • Storing information relatively permanent • Stored on basis of meaning and importance • Long-term memories, are maintained by more stable and permanent changes in neural connections widely spread throughout the brain. • The hippocampus is responsible (for learning new information) to the consolidation of information from short-term to long-term memory, although it does not seem to store information itself.

16. Hippocampus New memories cannot be stored into long-term memory without a hippocampus

17. Long Term Memory • Consolidation of information is also related to sleep • Setting new connections between neurons and solidifying those connections is suggested to be the way of long term storage

18. Working Memory (WM) • Active maintenance of information in the STM Baddeley and Hitch, 1970

19. Baddeley’s WM Concept • Central Executive: Attention acts as central executive component of WM. • Phonological loop: Store auditory information by silently rehearsing sounds or words in a continuous loop: the articulatory process • Visuospatial sketchpad: Store visual and spatial information. • Episodic buffer: Linking information across domains form integrated units of visual, spatial, and verbal information and chronological ordering (remembering a movie scene..)

20. Types of Memory • Procedural (implicit memory): Unconscious recall. Learning motor skills, riding a bike etc. • Declarative (explicit memory): Conscious recall • Semantic • Episodic memory • Topographic: Becoming oriented in time and space. • Retrospective – prospective (temporal direction)

21. Declarative Memory • Semantic Memory: Memory of meanings, understandings, and other concept-based knowledge. • Episodic Memory: Memory of autobiographical events.

22. Neurophysiology of Memory • Hippocampus (spatial, declarative learning) • Amygdala (emotional memory) • Striatum • Mammillary bodies

23. Other Factors • Emotions and odors • Interference from previous knowledge • Stress

24. Can you enhance your Memory? • Healthy eating • Physical exercise and fitness • Avoiding stress • Mental exercise

25. Clinical States Amnesia: Difficulty in remembering objects, events,.. Can be organic or psychogenic in ethyiology Hypermnesia:Remembering too much details. Manic or paranoid subjects Paramnesia:Distored remembering • Confabulation: Unremembered details are remembered wrong • Deja vu: Having a perception that the percept is not new, the event has happened before.

26. Psychogenic Amnesias Psychogenic Alter Persons Selective Amnesia Fug

27. Brain Regions Related with Memory HIPPOCAMPUS Cognitive Map/Categories Working Memory External stimuli AMYGDALA Alarm THALAMUS Novelty & Threat Detection Locus Coeruleus Memory Encoding Activation Prefrontal Cortex (Orbito/Dorsolateral) Integration/Decisions Narrative Memory Limbic Cortex (Anterior Cingulate) Awareness of Body, Self, Others Self-Calming/Reguulation