July 29, 2004 Test three is one week from today. And will include the last lecture on memory. 7,8,10,12 Lecture on the 10th is changed to pharmacology. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- LEARNING... Its seems reasonable that if something is to be remembered it needs to be learned. Learning and Memory are linked. When Psych was barely a discipline, Pavlov was studying in Russia. His initial area of science was gastro-intestinal secretions. I.E. how the stomach works when animals ate things. Pavlov won the Nobel prize for his work on this subject. The framework for the study: he was using dogs, they had a colony room where the dogs lived. Down the hallway was the laboratory. Everyday s technician would take a dog and wheel it down to the lab. They would measure the secretions in the gut. Over time (dogs were on a restricted diet.) they noticed that the dogs would begin salivating before they even got to the lab. Pavlov reasoned that the dogs used the cart ride down to the lab as a cue that food was on the way. So pavlov dropped the gastro study and began as the first learning and memory psychologist. He began collecting measurements with a cathiter (very precise). Classical conditioning Stimulus that reliably in and of itself produces a response. - Uncoditioned Stimulus. He would use a dry food powder to produce the uncoditioned stimulus. He got an uncoditioned response - the salivation of the dog. Ex: UCS --> Snake UCR--> Fear Pavlov reasoned that the UCS UCR relations were hard wired in your nervous system and didn't have to be learned. A UCS will not always produce a UCR. Only certain UCS will produce certain UCR. He would then take a stimulus that does not produce a certain UCR. - In this case he used a bell. - This ringing was neutral for that UCR. (Not necesarily everything.) - a Bell could be a UCS producing a UCR for the orientation auditory system. But it was not linked to the UCR he was looking for. Pavlov would play around with those two different things. # Of Correct Responses. IThis line is the UCS I_____________________________________________ I _/ I _/ I _/ I _/ I _/ I _/ I _/ I____/ This is the curve of ringing the bell I_____________________________________________ 0 Trials Lots He would first present the neutral stimulus; then use the UCS(dry food powder.) which would get the desired UCR. The bell ringing over time was learned as a cue for the UCR. which is called the CR in conjunction with a CS. Conditioned response comes from a conditioned stimulus. Forward conditioning. If the NS and the UCS are done more than a few seconds apart it usually doesn't work. If its done backwards (food powder then bell ring) it also is not very succesful. Taste diversion learning is one of the strongest memory and even behavior links. Ex: pregnant women getting sick at smell of something and forever after having a distaste for it. Another example of this conditioning.... Rabbits. They have two eyelids the normal one. And the nicitating membrane. This membrane covers the eye when a noxious stimulus is presented. A puff of air is used. A tone precedes it. This is done a very large amount of times a day: for ten days. It takes about one hundred trials to be ready for both rabbits and humans for the stimulus of the tone. So Pavlov thought that UCS-UCR relationship was hardwired into the brain. He also thought the area to receive NS was in a different area of the brain. So there was no actual connection between brain regions. He then reasoned that learning from a NS to UCS to UCR was from a neural growth to the region of the brain taht is resonsible for the UCR. So that over time there was an actual connection neurally between the NS and the UCR areas of the brain. Extinction Trials: Can you break apart that learning? He would ring the bell and not give food to the dog. I I-Changing point. The next day test looked like I ______ _ this. I _/ \_ / I _/ \_ / I _/ \_ / I _/ \_ / I _/ \_ / I _/ \_ / I _/ \/ I____/ This is the curve of ringing the bell Learning/Extinction I_____________________________________________ 0 Trials Lots So then Pavlov decided that Extinction must kill the neural pathway or connection. So to test this he tried training the dog for one day. THen doing the bell test again. Forgetting is not losing the information, its learning that what you learned is irrelevant data. If learning was the growing of these connections; then you should be able to block memory by destroying the connections between the areas. So Carl Lashley decided to test this... He would teach the rats very complex mazes. Under the assumption that the rats were making neural connections. He then would make lesions in the brain. In many different areas in verying sizes hoping to luck into the area believed to connect to the area resonsible. Exams... how do they function what is their purpose. - The ultimate goal should be to acertain how much information you know. - One way is to straight memorize the correct response to the correct stimulus. MEMORIZATION. - Another way to test it. Give a very similar stimulation (instead of the bell use a trianlge to cue the dog.) Or ask the question in a different way. If you do this you will get a result like this.... Amount of CR I _ I / \ I / \ I / \ I / \ I / \ I/___________\_____ I CS Likeness. Associative Learning. Reinforcement - process by which a stimulus or event increases likelyhood of an event(behavior in some cases.) This doens't have to be one person it can be a group of people as well. If you give reinforcement - you increase the likelyhood that the event will occur in the future. Two types - Positive and Negative. Positive - Applying some sort of reinforcement to the individual. Negative - you are removing some thing from the individual and they view it as reinforcing. Ex: Work hard for a year. You get a raise. That increases the likelyhood of working hard next year. Ex: If some group does something you like you can remove something they don't like having applied to them. Grounding... the behavior of the groundee changes in a way that is positive (according to you) and so you remove a noxious stimulus (which is the grounding.) Punishment is the opposite of reinforcement. It is used to decrease the likelyhood of an event. Positive: Applying something they don't like. Ex: Spanking for doing something wrong. Negative: Taking away something they like. Ex: taking away a child's favorite toy. Associative Learning is more effective learning.