Transcript Memories and your Brain

Memories and your Brain
Psychology 3717
Introduction
Look, your memories MUST be in your
brain
 Somewhere…..
 Questions arise though like umm where
are they stored?
 How are they stored?
 Is it just new connections or something
else?
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Don’t be afraid, it is just a bit of rote
memorization
Unless you know Greek and Latin…
 Brain is organized in, at best, a semi
random pattern
 Some of the names are confusing
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Substantia negra
 Zona inserta
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Some make a teeny bit of sense
Hippocampus
 amygdila
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A few key terms
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Anterior
Caudal
Dorsal
Frontal
Inferior
Lateral
Medial
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Posterior
Rostral
Sagittal
Superior
Ventral
dorsal
Time for a diagram!
Some important Subcortical
structures
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Hippocampus
Amygdila
Thalamus
Hypothalamus
Nucleus accumbens
Medula
The cells
There are two basic types of cells in the
brain, neurons and glial cells
 Neurons do the transmitting
 Glia do the support functions
 There are many types of neurons and glial
cells, but we don’t have to be too
concerned about those
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Fall in to the gap
Between neurons there are teensy gaps
 The synapse
 Neurotransmitters go across the gap to
cause the next neuron to fire
 Why not direct connections?
 Allows for modulatory properties of drugs
and other chemicals
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Learning and memory may happen
here
Seems sensible that learning and memory
could happen here
 New synapses?
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Enriched rats
Long Term Potentiation
Maybe
 Looked really promising
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On a more oh macro level, how can
you measure brian activity
There are many imaging techniques
 Before even EEG we had techniques like
those Penfield used
 Neurosurgeons were usually a tad busy
and had pesky operations to take care
of…
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EEG
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Oldest form of brain
imaging
CAT Scan
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Computerized axial
tomography
PET scan
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Positron emission
tomography
MRI
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Magnetic Resonance
Imaging
So, how do you combine this stuff
Easy (if expensive)
 Put a subject in an MRI or PET scanner
 scan
 Have her read a passage
 Do a distracter task
 scan
 Remember
 scan
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Some selected results
Aplysia and habituation
 Feature detectors
 Face detectors
 Place cells
 HM
 KC
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conclusions
Look we KNOW memories are up there
somewhere
 However, we are a LONG way from
figuring out where
 We are also a long way from figuring out
how
 Even once we do, someone has to design
the behavioural end of cognitive
neuroscience
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