# Wickens, A. Foundations of Biopsychology ## Chapter 12. Learning and Memory Learning and memory are two separate mechanisms. Learning is about the acquisition of information while memory is about the storage and retrieval of the acquired information. Pavlov's research on classic conditioning was the leading theory. It presented that all memory was linked to sensory regions of the cerebral cortex. Kashley was influence by this. He began to experiment with rats and found that in a maze task removal of parts didn't lead to drop off in maze task performance. Rather it was the amount of lesions made. With 5-15% having little impact where as 50% had significant impact on performance. This proposed that maybe memory was done across all areas of the brain. This had a few limitations though as some believed that the maze task was too complex to measure the locality of memory. Suggesting that the rats may have use smell, vision, taste etc to complete the maze task. As well as this, the limitations in experimental methods were a factor as {GAP} (want to say that it was because some areas of the brain were more easily targeted than others so led to a bias on what regions were removed or not removed) Hebb's research. He did his PhD under Dr. Kashley and wanted to look at mechanisms of learning. This was not possible experimentally though and so most of Hebb's work was theoretical. He theorised that the electrial impulse between neurons was responsible for the learning part. He then built on this and suggested that if the electrical impulse reverberates through a bundle of connected neurons then this can cause structural change in the cell bundles. I believe he called this Long Term Potentiation which may explain long term memory. I also think that he was the "cell that fire together, wire together" guy but unsure and wasn't covered in the book. Moving onto to Rosenwiegz' rats. He wanted to see the impact of experiences on learning and memory structurally. He had two conditions, rich and impoverished. The impoverished condition left the rats alone, with little stimulation or activities to do. The rich condition has groups of 12 rats together, with a new stimulus added every day for novelty. When he compared their brains, he found the following; 1. The enriched rats had thicker and heavier cerebral cortex 2. The enriched rats had greater levels of AChE / acetylcholinesterase (enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine) 3. The enriched rats had more spines on their dendrites and larger dendritic synapses Of the back of this, I wonder if this (among other research) invalidates the myth that as we get older we become more fixed and that children learn faster because their mind is less fixed. What if kids are just more enriched since they are learning how to walk, talk and are seeing everything for the first time which means they also may have more spines and larger synapses than adults. Learning begets more learning. Almost as if we get an exp boost from learning and as we get older we get less and less of a boost as we've learned everything. We don't get the exp from learning how to walk as we know how to do so. If this is true then is there a way to give yourself this exp boost back. Definitely not to the same extent as children to but maybe more than average.