April 03, 2025	PSY 340 Brain and Behavior Class 32 Learning, Memory, and Memory Loss

I. Localized Representations in Memory

Our experiences in life teach us things: putting our finger into a flame or an electrical socket will hurt, eating ice cream will usually taste really good, smiling at our boy- or girl-friend is more likely to keep them around than a frown, and failing to show up at work will usually get us fired. It seems as if learning connects one thing to another.

In the late 19th and first half of the 20th century, behavioral psychologists developed elaborate theories that we learn such connections because of our experiences.

• Ivan Pavlov developed the theory of classical conditioning which said that we learn to associate signals in the environment with the "real thing." So, bells can signal that dinner is served and our mouth may start watering as soon as we hear the bell ring. Or, the bell might signal the end of recess in elementary school and we begin to feel a little unhappy because we now face more work in the classroom. In our classroom here at Le Moyne, the clock in the front signals the end of class and you will often be tempted to close your books up a bit too early because you've learned that class is coming to an end.

• B. F. Skinner developed the theory of operant condition which said that we are either reinforced or punished by the environment for the behaviors we do and, thus, we "learn" either to do the behaviors more frequently or to avoid them. If someone gets a $350 speeding ticket for going 88 miles an hour on I-81 through Cortland, this punishment teaches them not to speed (at least along I-81). If you meet a really nice guy or girl at a particular night spot, the reinforcement from that meeting will probably get you to go back to that night spot again if you need to find another relationship.

• Where is the learning? There is no doubt that both theories are right insofar as we do learn from the environment and our experiences.
  

• But, where does that learning wind up in the brain?
• Where is the actual physical connection between what we did and what happened to us?
• Where is that memory about the speeding ticket which prompts us to slow down ten years after getting it in the first place?

Karl Lashley's FAILED Search for the Engram

University of Chicago and, later, Harvard physiologist and psychologist, Karl Lashley, wanted to find where learning resided in the brain. In the period from roughly 1920 to 1955, Lashley searched after the "engram" -- the physical representation (or memory trace) in the brain of what has been learned.

To do so, Lashley performed two general types of experiments.

Cortical Cuts. First, he trained rats to learn how to find food in mazes. When they had learned this, he performed operation on the rats by cutting areas of the cortex. He theorized that, if there was a link between two areas of the brain as a result of learning, he might pinpoint that link by making the cuts. The diagram shows you the different places where he cut the rat brain. When each rat recovered from the operation and put back into the maze, they didn't show any evidence of loss of learning.

Tissue Ablation. The second experiments involved maze learning as well. When the rats had learned to manouver in the maze, he performed a "tissue ablation" -- that is, he cut different amounts of tissue from the rat's cortex. The rats later on did more poorly in running the maze. But, it appeared to Lashley to be the amount of lost brain tissue, not the place where the tissue was removed that was related to poorer performance.

Lashley's Principles for the Nervous System. Lashley rejected the notion of localized learning. Rather he proposed two principles:

• Equipotentiality: All parts of the cortex contribute equally to learning; one part can substitute for another part.
  
  
• Mass Action: The cortex works as a whole; performance improves when more of the cortex is involved.

We know that Lashley was wrong about both of these principles? Why? He assumed (1) the engram (memory trace) is only in the cortex and (2) all memories are the same physiologically.

  The Modern Search for the Engram: Conditioning & the Lateral Pontine Nucleus of the Cerebellum

• Rabbit eyes will blink (= UR: unconditioned response) if a puff of air hits them (= US: unconditioned stimulus)
• Richard F. Thompson (Neuroscience, USC, California) conditioned rabbits using a tone (= CS: conditioned stimulus) which he paired with the US. Eventually, the rabbits learned to blink (= CR: conditioned response) when they heard the CS alone.
• Learning the CS:CR connection increased the activity level of the lateral pontine nucleus (LPN; also called the lateral interpositus nucleus in the text) of the cerebellum. Hence, Thompson tested the linkage of LPN and the red nucleus of the pons, an area to which the LPN connects. (Diagram above shows human pontine-cerebellar complex). He found
• Suppressing the LPN temporarily prevented rabbits from learning the CS:CR connection
• Suppressing the red nucleus temporarily prevented the rabbits from responding (the CR), but not the learning itself
• Conclusion: Learning seems to have taken place at the Lateral Pontine Nucleus. From this and multiple other studies, there appears to be involvement of the cerebellum in conditioned learning in humans as well.

II. Types of Memory

   Short- and Long-Term Memory

Donald O. Hebb proposed in the late 1940s a model of memory with two different components:

• short-term memory (STM; up to 20 seconds)
• Keeping items in STM requires regular rehearsal (actively calling items to mind) or else they will fade.
• George Miller noted, the storage capacity of STM is limited: 7 +/- 2 chunks of information. More recent research suggests that it is really more likely about 4 +/- 2 chunks.
• long-term memory (LTM; 20-60 seconds to a lifetime): anything that happened in the past which you can remember
• Hebb also proposed that all information enters into STM and stays there until the brain consolidates that information as LTM. Hebb argued that the shift from STM to LTM came with the "consolidation" of memories by means of a reverberating circuit within the nervous system. As the memory reverberates around the circuit, it gradually causes some type of permanent change in the chemical or structural make-up of the nervous system.

Changing Views of Consolidation

Earlier view: Consolidation is a general & simple process leading to a permanent long-term memory. But, this is no longer a viable option because

• Time for consolidation varies considerably: may take from an instant (for emotional memories) to hours (for memorizing facts). Something more than "simple" consolidation is taking place, e.g., cortisol in short term enhances consolidation, but may hinder consolidation if person is stressed for long periods.

• Memories are labile (changeable or vulnerable to alteration). When memories are recalled, they are frequently reconsolidated, that is, subtly changed or altered by new information, e.g., parent recalls a detail and child adds that detail to their memory; or, a policeman makes a remark about what a witness might have seen and the witness incorporates that remark into their memory. Recall the recent past class on the use of propranolol in helping patients with PTSD reduce the level of distress coming from memory of the event via reconsolidation. 
  

   Alan Baddeley's "Working Memory": A Modern Advance

In the early 1990s, Alan Baddeley (U York, UK) and his colleagues proposed a newer model of memory: working memory. This was revised in 2000-2001 and now includes 4 elements:

• phonological rehearsal loop: auditory & linguistic information
• visuospatial sketch pad
• episodic buffer: temporary storage of multimodal-coded information drawn from long-term memory and presented as an episodic representation (a scene)
• central executive control system: directs attention toward one or another stimuli and decides what will be put into the working memory
  

We may also have working memory systems for the other senses (touch, taste, smell), but not much research has been done on them.

Testing the "working memory" model uses delayed response tasks = respond to a stimulus that was seen or heard a short time ago with a time delay inserted between the perception and the response.

What parts of the brain are active during the delay, that is, while the working memory is rehearsing or holding the memory? Most active appears to be the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, multiple other areas of the prefrontal cortex are involved in other aspects of working memory besides rehearsal.

III. Memory Loss (Amnesia)

  A. Korsakoff's Syndrome & Other Prefrontal Damage

Wernicke's encephalopathy (WE) is an acute brain disorder in which a patient coming into a hospital has (1) profound global confusion, (2) difficulty in coordinating muscle movements (ataxia), and (3) problems using their eyes. It is fatal in 10-20% of cases coming to a hospital. It is caused by a deficiency of thiamine (vitamin B-1). 80% of patients surviving Wernicke's encephalopathy go on to develop Korsakoff's Syndrome (KS).

WE often develops in individuals with alcoholism. Other conditions that may result in WE include patients who have undergone bariatric surgery for permanent weight loss, other forms of gastrointestinal surgery, cancer, and pancreatitis (Kohnke & Meek, 2021).

WE is often under-diagnosed in living patients.

  Korsakoff's Syndrome (KS; also known as Korsakoff Psychosis)

• a chronic brain disorder characterized by severe memory problems: both anterograde and retrograde memory is usually damaged. Patients also show apathy and confusion.
  

The brain area damaged includes the mammillary bodies (beneath the hypothalamus) and the dorosmedial (or mediodorsal) thalamus (nucleus connected to pre-frontal cortex).

Patients with KS often show

• Confabulation: patient hides lack of memory by guessing an answer and, then, relies upon the guess as if it were an answer. The very confabulations themselves tend to prevent KS patients from learning anything new because they pay attention to their guesses rather than other data.

• Chronological reasoning difficulties: presented with several facts about events, KS patients have trouble figuring out the sequence or order of events on the basis of cues in the facts. For example: Mary had a baby when she was in college. It has been ten years since Mary first went to college. Is Mary's child older or younger than 10 years of age?

• Better new implicit than explicit memory due to the effects of priming.

Prevalence of KS. This condition is relatively rare. Consider what the number of cases might be in the US (which, in 2020, had a population of 331 million) Arts et al. (2017) note that there is very little data about the prevalence and what data there is show a range of values:

• 48 per 100,000 in The Hague, The Netherlands (1987 study) ===> would be equivalent to ca. 159K total cases in US in 2020
• 30 per 100,000 in North-Holland, The Netherlands (1992 study)
• 5 per 100,000 per year in Glasgow, Scotland (1990-1995) ====> would be equivalent to ca. 16.5K total cases in US in 2020
• No other prevalence rates appear to be available

  B. Alzheimer's Disease

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References

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Arts, N. J. M., Walvoort, S. J. W., & Kessels, R. P. C. (2017). Korsakoff’s syndrome: A critical review. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 13, 2875-2890. https://doi.org/10.2147/NDT.S130078

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Koknke, S., & Meek, C. L. (2021). Don’t seek, don’t find: The diagnostic challenge of Wernicke’s encephalopathy. Annals of Clinical Biochemistry, 58(1), 38-46. https://doi.org/10.1177/0004563220939604

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Stallard, P. J. E., Ukraintseva, S. V., & Doraiswamy, M. (2025, March 12). Changing story of the demential epidemic. JAMA. Online. https://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2025.1897

 

  The first version of this page was posted on April 17, 2005