Ucl biology Study guides, Revision notes & Summaries

Value-Based Choice (Lecture 11 of 16 in NEUR00014: Neural Basis of Motivation and Learning) Through review of the neural basis of value-based choice.

Hippocampus & Memory (Lecture 5 of 16 in NEUR0014: Neural Basis of Motivation and Learning) Thorough review of the role of the hippocampus in memory, including the Standard Consolidation Model, oppositions to this model and the proposed neural bases of memory consolidation, storage and recall.

The Amygdala Complex (Lecture 16 of 16 in NEUR0014: Neural Basis of Motivation and Learning). Thorough review of the amygdala complex and its relationship with learning, motivation and emotion. Exerpt: "The pervasive use of the fear conditioning paradigm in rodents has meant that, for many years the amygdala was thought of as the brain’s ‘fear’ module. Accumulating evidence, from patient data, lesion studies in non-human primates and single neuron recordings convincingly paints a ...

Hypothalamus (Lecture 2 of 16 in NEUR0014: Neural Basis of Motivation and Learning) Thorough review of the hypothalamus as it relates to behavioural control, including ingestive and affiliative (parental and pair bonding) behaviours

The Hippocampus & Spatial Cognition (Lecture 3 of 16 in NEUR0014: Neural Basis of Motivation and Learning) Thorough review of the hippocampus as it relates to spatial cognition, including place cells, head-direction cells and grid cells.

Basal Ganglia (Lecture 10 of 16 in NEUR0014: Neural Basis of Motivation and Learning) Thorough review of the basal ganglia as it relates to learning of behaviours. Traditionally thought to support procedural learning (i.e. habit formation), more recent research supports the basal ganglia to play a role in both goal-oriented (dorso-medial striatum) and habitual (dorso-lateral striatum) behaviour.

The Role of Dopamine in Learning (Lecture 9 of 16 in NEUR0014: Neural Basis of Motivation and Learning) Through review of dopamine as it relates to learning, reward and motivation, including the hedonia hypothesis, incentive salience theory and reward contiguity, contingency and prediction error.

Adult Neurogenesis and the Dentate Gyrus (Lecture 6 of 16 in NEUR0014: Neural Basis of Motivation and Learning) Thorough review of adult neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus in both mammals and humans, and how this relates to memory storage and recall.

Mirror Neurons and Theory of Mind (Lecture 14 of 16 in NEUR0014: Neural Basis of Motivation and Learning). Thorough review of mirror neurons as it relates to the Theory of Mind in human and non-human primates. Includes the Mirror Neuron Deficit Theory in the causation of autism spectrum disorder and the Simulation Theory of Mentalising - and oppositions to these theories.

The Egocentric Representation of Space in the Parietal Cortex (Lecture 8 of 16 in NEUR0014: Neural Basis of Motivation and Learning) Thorough review of the parietal cortex as it relates to its egocentric encoding of space, as opposed the allocentric encoding in the hippocampus (see Lecture 5 of this series). Includes the Milan Square experiment, interactions between the parietal cortex (egocentric) and hippocampus (allocentric) systems, and early research intro the retrosplenial cortex as a...