Learning & Memory
This type of conditioning involves learning behaviors through rewards and punishments.
What is operant conditioning?
This hormone, released by the adrenal cortex during stress, has a slower, longer-lasting effect on the body.
What is cortisol?
This process strengthens synaptic connections when they are frequently used—helping form new neural networks and supporting learning and memory.
What is long-term potentiation?
Generally, in what ways do the types of memories differ?
Memories differ by content (explicit or implicit) and duration (long-term or short-term).
Affecting roughly 19% of U.S. adults, this group of mental disorders is the most common according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
What are anxiety disorders?
In this form of conditioning, a neutral stimulus becomes associated with an involuntary response after being paired repeatedly with an unconditioned stimulus.
What is classical conditioning?
What are the long term side effects/symptoms of chronic stress?
What are impaired immune system, inhibited digestive and reproductive systems, impaired cognitive function, etc.
This neurotransmitter binds to both AMPA and NMDA receptors to initiate long-term potentiation.
What is glutamate?
Long-term memory is divided into these two major types—one for conscious recall of facts and events, and the other for unconscious skills and habits.
What are declarative (explicit) and non-declarative (implicit) memory?
Overactivity in this brain region is commonly seen in both anxiety and depression, contributing to heightened threat sensitivity and negative emotional bias.
What is the amygdala?
This neocortex-based, nondeclarative memory process occurs when prior exposure to a stimulus (like hearing "A") influences your response to a later stimulus (like expecting "B")—all without conscious awareness.
What is Priming?
This fast-acting hormone, released by the adrenal glands during stress, helps trigger the body’s “fight or flight” response.
What is epinephrine?
This term describes the weakening of synaptic strength over time, considered the opposite of long-term potentiation.
What is long-term depression?
These are the two subtypes of declarative memory.
What are episodic memory (memory for personal experiences or events) and semantic memory (memory for facts and general knowledge)?
This is the most common type of hallucination experienced by people with schizophrenia.
What are auditory hallucinations?
This brain region is essential for procedural or skill learning such as playing the bugle or picking a lock.
What is the basal ganglia?
Name two physiological systems that are inhibited during a stress response because they are not deemed immediately necessary.
What are the digestive system and the reproductive system?
In order for calcium to enter the postsynaptic neuron during LTP, this ion must first be removed from the NMDA receptor channel.
What is magnesium (Mg²⁺)?
This brain region, critical for spatial memory and navigation, contains "place cells"—neurons that fire when an animal is in a specific location. Their discovery came from studies of rats exploring mazes.
What is the hippocampus?
People with schizophrenia often show these structural brain changes.
What are larger ventricles and reduced gray matter?
What type of memory loss did Patient H.M. (Henry Molaison) experience after his hippocampus was surgically removed to prevent seizures?
What is anterograde amnesia?
H.M. could not form new explicit memories (like remembering facts or events), but could form new procedural memories.
In high-stress situations, this brain structure takes over control from the prefrontal cortex, leading to more reflexive and habitual emotional responses.
What is the amygdala?
These are four cellular mechanisms by which long-term potentiation (LTP) strengthens synaptic connections.
What are increased AMPA receptor sensitivity, increased AMPA receptors added, increased glutamate release via a retrograde signal, and increased dendritic growth?
This syndrome, often linked to chronic alcohol use and thiamine deficiency, damages the mammillary bodies, thalamus, and hippocampus—resulting in severe anterograde amnesia.
What is Korsakoff Syndrome?
This class of antidepressants works by increasing serotonin levels in the brain by preventing its reuptake into the presynaptic neuron.
What are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)?