Psych 3FA3, midterm-rev.doc
HISTORY
Part 1. Pre-1960s period
1. William James 1890,
a. Principles of Psychology
2. Edward Thorndike (1874-1949)
a. the first to use an experimental approach to study animal learning
b. Instrumental conditioning
3. Pavlov, the turn of 19 century, classical conditioning
4. Search for the engram
a. Karl Lashley (1929) failed attempt and pessimistic view
Part 2. System level analysis: Multiple memory systems
5. Neuropsychology:
a. Patient HM
b. retrograde (backward-acting) amnesia & implication
Part 3, Anatomical and neurochemical correlates of neuronal plasticity
6. Donald O. Hebb (1949)
7. Two early experimental findings demonstrating the brain can be altered measurably by
training and differential experience (early 1960s).
a. Rosenzweig‘s group
b. Hubel and Wiesel
MULTIPLE MEMORY SYSTEM IN HUMANS
The selective nature of the memory impairment in amnesia
1. selective to memory
2. selective to particular domains of learning and memory capacity
a. Remember materials learned remotely prior to his operation
b. Immediate or short term memory intact
c. Nondeclarative memory spared
i. acquisition of skills
ii. perceptual learning
iii. Pavlovian conditioning
iv. priming
Classical experiment showing dissociation of declarative and nondeclarative memory
system in human
DECLARATIVE MEMORY IN ANIMALS
1. Research aims of animal models
a. Neuropsychological aim
b. Comparative aim
c. Neurobiological mechanisms
2. Limitations and special challenges associated with the study of declarative memory in
animals
3. Cognitive processing in rodents
a. O _Keefe and Nadel’s (1978): hippocampus mediates cognitive map (the establishment
of an organized neural representation of the physical environment)
b. Rats with hippocampal system damage are severely impaired in many form of spatial
exploration and learning.
c. Place learning: Morris water-maze task
i. Hippocampal system damage impair the ability to lean the location of the
escape platform, animal declarative vs nondeclarative memory system
4. Visual recognition memory in nonhuman primates
a. delayed non-match-sample task (DNMS)
b. damage limited to the hippocampus has only modest effect in monkeys (but
bigger effect in humans)
c. damage to the perirhinal and parahippocampal region can produce the full
pattern of the amnesic deficit.
THE CEREBRAL CORTEX AND MEMORY
1. Cortical localization _ general principles
a. receptive field
b. Topographical map.
2. Reorganization of the cortex during the course of development (David Hubel and
Torsten Wiesel)
a. Ocular dominance
b. Orientation selectivity.
3. reorganization of the visual cortex in adulthood (Gilbert)
a. Lesion (minutes and 2 months)
b. Artificial scotoma (before, during, after)
4. Rearrangements of the somatotopic representation (Merzenich)
5. Cortical reorganization also occurs as a result of learning
a. Pavlovian conditioning (Norman Weinberger),
6. higher areas of cortex respond to learning - inferotemporal cortex (IT)
a. effects of damage to this area
b. PET or fMRI studies
c. normal sensory response properties of IT cells
i. The selectivity of IT cells is sometimes highly specific
ii. change their firing patterns in accordance with their recent past history
(short-term or working memory).