Improvement in identifying or processing a stimulus
as a result of its having been observed previously.
Perceptual priming
Words presented quickly and subjects asked to identify them
Some time later subjects are presented with word stems and asked to complete them
increased probability of choosing previously presented words
Classical conditioning
Conditioned Stimulus can illicit a conditioned response which is very similar to
the Unconditioned Response in the absence of the Unconditioned Stimulus
Non-associative learning
does not involve the association of two
stimuli to illicit a behavioural response
Habituation
decrease in level of response through repeated exposure to a stimulus
Sensitisation
Increase in level of response through repeated exposure to a stimulus
Declarative
Semantic memory
memory for facts
Episodic Memory
Role of the hippocampus
HM
recall predicted by single cells in human hippocampus
In animals?
birds choose the worms when they are fresh
but not when they have learnt they will be bad
remember what food they stored, where they stored and when they stored it.
Rats with hippocampus lesions cannot remember the combination
of what, where and which: deficit in episodic-like memory.
Receives and stores information about temporally dated episodes
or events and the temporal-spatial relations among these events.
What happened, where it happened, when it happened.
Autonoetic consciousness added later
Cellular Mechanisms for Memory Consolidation (Synaptic Plasticity)
Learning must involve changes in synaptic function
For long term memory these changes must be long lasting
Long term potentiation (LTP)
Spatial Memory and Navigation
Component of episodic memory
Map-like cognitive representation of familiar spatial locations.
Supported by right hippocampus
Posterior hippocampus larger in taxi drivers (more experience = bigger hippocampus) but not bus drivers
Damage impairs spatial ability in rats
Entorhinal cortex supports both
Place cells
O'Keefe
“ …Each place cell receives two different inputs, one conveying information about a large number of environmental
stimuli or events, and the other from a navigational system which calculates where an animal is in an environment…”
67% of place cells on the central stem of the T-maze
differentiate between left and right turn trials.