Overview
Learning and memory go together. And you already know how to use them. You use them all the time.
A great learning theorist (me) has said there are only three types of things you can learn: facts, concepts and behaviors. Each uses a different part of the brain and require different techniques. But they all work together.
Facts was difficult to remember if they are unstructured. Ebbinghaus showed that we forget lists of unrelated words very quickly. This tells us that to remember facts (the kind of things that appear on tests) organizing them into clusters and meaningful units is really important.
Attack and escape behaviors and related to fear and anxiety. Anxiety disorders are an extension or over-activation of our normal processes.
Conceptual learning refers to our ability to learn rules. When you are three years old, you can learn a rule but have difficulty changing to a new rule. When you are four years old, you can use different rules as needed.
Learning behaviors involves our implicit memory system. We learn skills and habits by practicing them. Their forgetting curve is quite different from the one that describes learning lists of facts.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this module, you should be able to:
- Compare and contrast classical and operant conditioning.
- Explain how the amygdala and hippocampus aid learning.
- Describe how a Hebbian synapse works.
- Describe the major types of memory.
Readings
- Kalat C12
- Human Memory
- Memory Disorders
Slides
Videos
Discussion
Would it be ethical to prescribe medication that helps improve the memory of Alzheimer’s patients for students or professors? What about medication that improves attention?Quiz (not the same as on Canvas)
Quiz (not the same as on Canvas)
Written Assignment
- Compare and contrast retrograde and anterograde amnesia and their causes.
- Describe Alzheimer’s disease and its causes.
- What did you find difficult or confusing in this chapter? If nothing was difficult or confusing, what did you find most interesting?
Study Aids
Key Terms
- Alzheimer’s disease
- amnesia
- AMPA receptor
- amyloid-B
- anterograde amnesia
- associativity
- BSNF
- classical conditioning
- conditioned response (CR)
- conditioned stimulus (CS)
- confabulation
- consolidate
- cooperativity
- declarative memory
- delayed matching-to-sample task
- delayed response task
- engram
- episodic memory
- equpotentiality
- explicit memory
- habituation
- Hebbian synapse
- implicit memory
- instrumental conditioning
- Korsakoff’s syndrome
- lateral interpositus nucleus (LIP)
- long-term depression (LTD)
- long-term memory
- long-term potentiation (LTP)
- mass action
- Morris water maze
- NMDA receptor
- procedural memory
- punishment
- radial maze
- reinforcer
- retrograde amnesia
- retrograde transmitter
- semantic dementia
- semantic memory
- sensitization
- short-term memory
- specificity
- tau protein
- unconditioned response (UCR)
- unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
- working memory
Links
- Neuroscience for Kids: Brain Plasticity (Links to an external site.)
- Scientific American: Brain Games (Links to an external site.)
Summary
Learning and memory are complimentary aspects of the same phenomenon. We know we have learned when we can remember.