Physiological Psychology

1. Relational Learning and
Amnesia
Physiological Psychology
Tashara Thomas
O’niel White

2. What is Relational Learning?
Relational learning is a complex form of learning
that involves the relations among individual stimuli;
includes spatial learning, episodic learning and
observational learning.
Learning, so far has been described/understood as
changes in circuits of neurons that detects the
presence of a particular stimuli or as a
strengthened connections between neurons that
analyze sensory information and those that
produce responses.

3. What is Relational Learning?
However most forms of learning are complex, as
memory is a much needed aspect, it becomes
complex as most memories are related to other
memories.
When seeing someone you know neural circuits in
the visual association cortex that recognize your
friend’s face are connected to other circuits in
many other parts of the brain and these circuits
are connected to many others.

5. Memory
Memory is the retention of information over a period
of time.
There are two types of long term memory; these are
declarative and non-declarative memory.
Non-declarative memory refers to a collective of nonconscious knowledge systems that operate outside of
awareness

6. Memory
Declarative memory is the kind of memory impaired in
amnesia, and it refers to the capacity to remember
the facts and events of everyday life.

7. Memory

8. Amnesia
Amnesia refers to difficulty in learning new
information or in remembering the past. Neurological
amnesia is characterized by a loss of declarative
memory.
There are two types of amnesia anterograde and
retrograde amnesia.

9. Anterograde Amnesia
This is difficulty in learning new information. A person
with pure anterograde amnesia can remember events
that occurred in the past, during the time before the
brain damage occurred but cannot retain information
he/she encounters after the damage.

10. Korsakoff’s Syndrome
In 1889, Sergei Korsakoff a Russian physician first
described a severe memory impairment caused by
brain damage and as a result the disorder was
given his name “Korsakoff Syndrome”.

11. Korsakoff’s Syndrome
The most profound symptom of Korsakoff syndrome
is a severe anterograde amnesia. Patients with this
syndrome appear to be unable to form new memories
although they can still remember old ones. They can
converse normally and can remember events that
happened long before their brain damage.

12. Anterograde amnesia can also be caused by damage to the
temporal lobe.

14. Korsakoff’s Syndrome
Scoville and Milner (1957) reported that bilateral
removal of the medial temporal lobe produced a
memory impairment in humans that was apparently
identical to that seen in Korsakoff’s Syndrome.

15. Semantic and Episodic Memory
The memory impairment in amnesia involves both
difficulty in learning factual information (semantic
memory) as well as difficulty in learning about specific
episodes and events that occurred in a certain time
and place (episodic memory).
The term semantic memory is often used to describe
declarative memory for organized world knowledge
(Tulving, 1983)

16. Semantic and Episodic Memory
In recalling this type of information, one need not
remember any particular past event. One needs only to
know about certain facts.
Episodic memory, by contrast, is autobiographical
memory for the events of one’s life (Tulving, 1983).
Unlike semantic memory, episodic memory includes
spatial and temporal landmarks that identify the
particular time and place when an event occurred.

17. Semantic and Episodic Memory
Both episodic memory and semantic memory are
declarative.
The memory deficit in amnesia is global, in that it
encompasses all sensory modalities (e.g., visual,
auditory, olfactory). That is, memory is impaired
regardless of the kind of material that is presented
and the sensory modality in which information is
presented.

18. Retrograde Amnesia
This is the inability to remember events that
happened before the brain damage occurred.
The extent of retrograde amnesia can be relatively
short and encompass only one or two years, or it can
be more extensive and cover decades. Even when
retrograde amnesia is extensive, memories for the
facts and events of childhood and adolescence are
typically intact.

19. Learning
Many psychologist believe that learning consists of
two stages; short term memory and long term
memory.
They conceive of short term memory as a means of
storing a limited amount of information temporarily
and long term memory as a means of storing an
unlimited amount.

20. Learning Model

21. Learning
Short term memory is an immediate memory for
stimuli that have just been perceived.
We can remember an item of information such as a
phone number for as long as we want to by engaging
in a particular behavior: rehearsal.
However, once we stop rehearsing the information
we might or might not be able to remember it later.
That is the information might or might not get stored
in long term memory.

22. Anterograde Amnesia: Failure of
Relational Learning
As is often argued, anterograde amnesia appears to
be a loss of the ability to establish new declarative
memories; the ability to establish new non-declarative
memories (perceptual, stimulus response, or motor
learning) is intact.

23. Anterograde Amnesia: Failure of
Relational Learning
The phenomenon of anterograde amnesia and its
implications have led investigators to study it in
laboratory animals.
A result of this they have found that damage to the
hippocampus, or to regions that supply inputs and
receive inputs causes anterograde amnesia.

24. Anterograde Amnesia: Failure of
Relational Learning
The most important input to the hippocampal
formation comes from the entorhinal cortex. The
entorhinal cortex receives information from the
cingulate cortex and all regions of the association
cortex, either directly or via two adjacent regions of
the limbic cortex; the perirhinal cortex and the
parahippocampal cortex.

25. Anterograde Amnesia: Failure of
Relational Learning

26. Anterograde Amnesia: Failure of
Relational Learning
Memory is organized. When asked about breakfast for
example. You may recall as set of perceptual memories –
memories that occurred at a particular time and place.
During the experience the hippocampus ties memories
with it. And as a result the enables us to learn the
relationship between the stimuli that were present at the
time – the context – and the events themselves.

27. Anterograde Amnesia: Failure of
Relational Learning
Anterograde amnesia then appears to be the loss of
the ability to learn about the relationships among
stimuli, including the time place in which it occurred
and the order of the occurrences.

28. Anterograde Amnesia: Spatial
Memory
People with Anterograde Amnesia are unable to
consolidate information about the location of rooms
corridors, buildings, roads and other important items
in their environment.
Bilateral Damage to the hippocampal formation
produces the most profound impairment to spatial
memory.

29. Spatial Memory and Relational
Learning
As a result of damage to the hippocampus you are
then unable to distinguish between contexts, which
include space and time.
The hippocampus contains neurons that respond
when in a particular location, this implies that the
hippocampus contains neural networks that keep
track of the relations between stimuli that then
defines the location to you.

30. THE END!