HMB200H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Auditory Cortex, Dishabituation, Unimodality
Document Summary
Simple associative learning: higher learning: explicit and implicit, dissociating multiple memory systems. Learning and memory - definitions are not clear in the field. Learning: relatively permanent change in behaviour that results from experience. Memory: ability to recall or recognize previous experience. You do not always recall stuff you have learned. Memory trace / engram: mental representation of a previous experience. Presumed to correspond to some physical change in the brain. Thought to involve a network of neurons, whose connections were strengthened through plasticity mechanisms - change in synapse. Activation of that network of neurons = memory. Can involve hundreds, thousands, or more neurons firing in seq / simultaneously. An engram is a network that creates the conditioned response. Memory engram is enhanced (the pathway of bell that affects) Still a mystery what neurons exactly facilitate, but you know the trace / engram exists. Engram is path from bell to the salivation. Triggered by brainstem structures - the reticular formation.
