Bio Psychology – Chapter 13 “Learning and Memory”
Localized Representations of Memory
o An early influential idea was that a connection forms between two
brain areas
Led to the search for localized representations of memory
o Pavlov believed that conditioning strengthened connections
between the CS center and UCS center in the brain
o Karl Lashley set out to prove this by searching for such engrams, or
physical representations of what had been learned
Believed that a knife cut should abolish the newly learned
response
o Lashley’s studies attempted to see if disrupting certain connections
between cortical brain areas would disrupt abilities to learn
associations
Found that learning and memory did not depend entirely on
connections across the cortex
Also found that learning did not depend on a single area of
the cortex
o Lashley proposed two key principles about the nervous system:
Equipotentiality: all parts of the cortex contribute equally to
complex functioning behaviors (e.g., learning)
Mass action: the cortex works as a whole, and more cortex is
better
o Richard F. Thompson et al. suggested that the engram for classical
conditioning is located in the cerebellum, not the cortex
o Changes occur in the lateral interpositus nucleus (LIP) of the
cerebellum
Responses increase as learning proceeds
Necessary for learning and retention
o However, a change in a brain area does not necessarily mean that
learning took place in that area
o Suppression of activity in the LIP led to a condition in which the
subject displayed no previous learning
o As suppression wore off, the animal began to learn at the same
speed as animals with no previous training, but suppression of the
red nucleus also led to a similar condition
o Later assumed that the learning did occur in the LIP, as it was the
last structure that needed to be awake for learning to occur
Types of Memory
o Psychologists differentiate between learning and memory
o Hebb (1949) differentiated between two types of memory:
Short-term memory: memory of events that have just
occurred
Long-term memory: memory of events from times further
back
o Differences between STM and LTM
Short-term memory has a limited capacity; long-term memory
does not
, Short-term memory fades quickly without rehearsal; long-
term m. persist
Memories from long-term m. can be stimulated with a cue/
hint; retrieval of memories lost from STM do not benefit from
the presence of a cue
o Researchers: all information enters STM where the brain
consolidates it into LTM
o Later research has weakened the distinction between STM and LTM
Not all rehearsed short-term memories become long-term
memories
Time needed for consolidation varies
Epinephrine and cortisol enhance consolidation of recent
experiences
o Reconsolidated: memory is strengthened again by a process that
requires protein synthesis
o Working memory
Proposed by Baddeley & Hitch as an alternative to short-term
memory
Emphasis on temporary storage of information to actively
attend to it and work on it for a period of time
o Common test of working memory is the delayed response task
Requires responding to something you heard or saw a short
while ago
o Research points to the prefrontal cortex for the storage of this
information
o Brain may use elevated levels of calcium to potentiate later
responses
o Older people often have impairments in working memory
o Changes in the prefrontal cortex are assumed to be the cause
o Declining activity of the prefrontal cortex in the elderly is associated
with decreasing memory
o Increased activity in this area indicates compensation for other
regions in the brain
The Hippocampus
o Amnesia is the loss of memory
o Studies on amnesia help to clarify the distinctions between and
among different kinds of memories and their mechanisms
o Different areas of the hippocampus are active during memory
formation and retrieval
Damage results in amnesia
o H.M. is a famous case study in psychology who had his hippocampus
removed to prevent epileptic seizures
o Afterwards, H.M. had great difficulty forming new long-term
memories
o STM or working memory remained intact
o Suggested that the hippocampus is vital for the formation of new
long-term memories
H.M. showed massive anterograde amnesia after the surgery
o Two major types of amnesia include:
, Anterograde amnesia: loss of ability to form new memory
after brain damage
Retrograde amnesia: the loss of memory events prior to the
occurrence of the brain damage
o H.M. had difficulty with episodic memory and declarative memory
Episodic memory: ability to recall single personal events
Declarative memory: ability to state a memory into words
o H.M.’s procedural memory remained intact
Procedural memory: ability to develop motor skills
(remembering or learning how to do things
o Patient H.M. also displayed greater “implicit” than “explicit”
memory, as most patients with amnesia do
Explicit memory (declarative memory): deliberate recall of
information that one recognizes as a memory
Implicit memory: the influence of recent experience on
behavior without realizing one is using memory
o People with amnesia generally show this pattern:
Normal working memory
Difficulty forming new declarative memories
Some degree of retrograde amnesia
Better implicit than explicit memory
Nearly intact procedural memory
o Research of the function of the hippocampus suggests that it is:
Critical for declarative memory functioning (especially
episodic)
Especially important for spatial memory
Especially important for contextual learning and binding
o Research in the role of the hippocampus in episodic memory shows
damage impairs abilities on two types of tasks:
Delayed matching-to-sample tasks: subject sees an
object and must later choose the object that matches
Delayed non-matching-to-sample tasks: subject sees an
object and must later choose the object that is different than
the sample
o Damage to the hippocampus also impairs abilities on spatial tasks
such as:
Radial mazes: a subject must navigate a maze that has
eight or more arms with a reinforcer at the end
Morris water maze task: a rat must swim through murky
water to find a rest platform just underneath the surface
o Hippocampus may also be important for contextual learning
o Remembering the detail and context of an event
o Damage to the hippocampus impairs recent learning more than
older learning
o The more consolidated a memory becomes, the less it depends on
the hippocampus
The Basal Ganglia
o The hippocampus is not responsible for all memory, as gradual
learning still takes place
o Implicit learning or habit learning depends on the basal ganglia
Localized Representations of Memory
o An early influential idea was that a connection forms between two
brain areas
Led to the search for localized representations of memory
o Pavlov believed that conditioning strengthened connections
between the CS center and UCS center in the brain
o Karl Lashley set out to prove this by searching for such engrams, or
physical representations of what had been learned
Believed that a knife cut should abolish the newly learned
response
o Lashley’s studies attempted to see if disrupting certain connections
between cortical brain areas would disrupt abilities to learn
associations
Found that learning and memory did not depend entirely on
connections across the cortex
Also found that learning did not depend on a single area of
the cortex
o Lashley proposed two key principles about the nervous system:
Equipotentiality: all parts of the cortex contribute equally to
complex functioning behaviors (e.g., learning)
Mass action: the cortex works as a whole, and more cortex is
better
o Richard F. Thompson et al. suggested that the engram for classical
conditioning is located in the cerebellum, not the cortex
o Changes occur in the lateral interpositus nucleus (LIP) of the
cerebellum
Responses increase as learning proceeds
Necessary for learning and retention
o However, a change in a brain area does not necessarily mean that
learning took place in that area
o Suppression of activity in the LIP led to a condition in which the
subject displayed no previous learning
o As suppression wore off, the animal began to learn at the same
speed as animals with no previous training, but suppression of the
red nucleus also led to a similar condition
o Later assumed that the learning did occur in the LIP, as it was the
last structure that needed to be awake for learning to occur
Types of Memory
o Psychologists differentiate between learning and memory
o Hebb (1949) differentiated between two types of memory:
Short-term memory: memory of events that have just
occurred
Long-term memory: memory of events from times further
back
o Differences between STM and LTM
Short-term memory has a limited capacity; long-term memory
does not
, Short-term memory fades quickly without rehearsal; long-
term m. persist
Memories from long-term m. can be stimulated with a cue/
hint; retrieval of memories lost from STM do not benefit from
the presence of a cue
o Researchers: all information enters STM where the brain
consolidates it into LTM
o Later research has weakened the distinction between STM and LTM
Not all rehearsed short-term memories become long-term
memories
Time needed for consolidation varies
Epinephrine and cortisol enhance consolidation of recent
experiences
o Reconsolidated: memory is strengthened again by a process that
requires protein synthesis
o Working memory
Proposed by Baddeley & Hitch as an alternative to short-term
memory
Emphasis on temporary storage of information to actively
attend to it and work on it for a period of time
o Common test of working memory is the delayed response task
Requires responding to something you heard or saw a short
while ago
o Research points to the prefrontal cortex for the storage of this
information
o Brain may use elevated levels of calcium to potentiate later
responses
o Older people often have impairments in working memory
o Changes in the prefrontal cortex are assumed to be the cause
o Declining activity of the prefrontal cortex in the elderly is associated
with decreasing memory
o Increased activity in this area indicates compensation for other
regions in the brain
The Hippocampus
o Amnesia is the loss of memory
o Studies on amnesia help to clarify the distinctions between and
among different kinds of memories and their mechanisms
o Different areas of the hippocampus are active during memory
formation and retrieval
Damage results in amnesia
o H.M. is a famous case study in psychology who had his hippocampus
removed to prevent epileptic seizures
o Afterwards, H.M. had great difficulty forming new long-term
memories
o STM or working memory remained intact
o Suggested that the hippocampus is vital for the formation of new
long-term memories
H.M. showed massive anterograde amnesia after the surgery
o Two major types of amnesia include:
, Anterograde amnesia: loss of ability to form new memory
after brain damage
Retrograde amnesia: the loss of memory events prior to the
occurrence of the brain damage
o H.M. had difficulty with episodic memory and declarative memory
Episodic memory: ability to recall single personal events
Declarative memory: ability to state a memory into words
o H.M.’s procedural memory remained intact
Procedural memory: ability to develop motor skills
(remembering or learning how to do things
o Patient H.M. also displayed greater “implicit” than “explicit”
memory, as most patients with amnesia do
Explicit memory (declarative memory): deliberate recall of
information that one recognizes as a memory
Implicit memory: the influence of recent experience on
behavior without realizing one is using memory
o People with amnesia generally show this pattern:
Normal working memory
Difficulty forming new declarative memories
Some degree of retrograde amnesia
Better implicit than explicit memory
Nearly intact procedural memory
o Research of the function of the hippocampus suggests that it is:
Critical for declarative memory functioning (especially
episodic)
Especially important for spatial memory
Especially important for contextual learning and binding
o Research in the role of the hippocampus in episodic memory shows
damage impairs abilities on two types of tasks:
Delayed matching-to-sample tasks: subject sees an
object and must later choose the object that matches
Delayed non-matching-to-sample tasks: subject sees an
object and must later choose the object that is different than
the sample
o Damage to the hippocampus also impairs abilities on spatial tasks
such as:
Radial mazes: a subject must navigate a maze that has
eight or more arms with a reinforcer at the end
Morris water maze task: a rat must swim through murky
water to find a rest platform just underneath the surface
o Hippocampus may also be important for contextual learning
o Remembering the detail and context of an event
o Damage to the hippocampus impairs recent learning more than
older learning
o The more consolidated a memory becomes, the less it depends on
the hippocampus
The Basal Ganglia
o The hippocampus is not responsible for all memory, as gradual
learning still takes place
o Implicit learning or habit learning depends on the basal ganglia
