Psych 3L03 Neuroscience Laboratory

PROJECT 1: BRAIN MECHANISMS FOR SKILL LEARNING

LECTURE AFTER THE EXPERIMENT

LITERATURE REVIEW

Note: For the Introduction of the lab report, you are not required to read any articles other than Rioult-Pedotti et al (1998) and Martinez et al (1996), but feel free to cite other articles/books including the papers discussed by the two papers we used.

  1. Background on Neural mechanisms for learning and memory (from Martinez, J. L. Jr. & Derrick, B. E. (1996). Long-term-potentiation and learning. Annual Review of Psychology, 47, 173-203)
    1. Donald O. Hebb (1949), changes in synapses is the key
      1. proposed that functional relationship between a presynatic neuron (A) and a postsynaptic neuron (B) could change if A frequently took part in exciting B.
      2. when an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A's efficacy, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.
    2. morphological change
      1. Rosenzweig's work
    3. ELECTROPHSYIOLOGICAL APPROACH
      1. Green and Greenough (1986)
        1. Rearing animals in complex environments produces
        2. In vitro hippocampal slices, field EPSP was larger
      2. Sharp, McMaughton and Barnes (1989)
        1. exploration behaviour produced increases in synaptic responses -- field EPSP
      3. Moser, Mathiesen, Andersen (1993)
        1. The increase in EPSP during exploration do not reflect learning-specific changes, but result from a concomitant rise in brain temperature that is caused by the associated muscular effort.
        2. Enhanced dentate field excitory potentials followed passive and active heating and were linearly related to the brain temperature.
  2. MOTOR CORTEX
    1. morphological change
    2. alteration of representation map
    3. synaptic mechanisms ? Still need Definitive evidence
  3. Rioult-Pedotti et al (1998), Nature Neuroscience
    1. Rat skill learning task
    2. recording form slices of motor cortex, stimulating horizontal intracortical connections in layers II/III
    3. Results: recording from training side, found
      1. field potential increased,
      2. LTP decreased