Week 4 Biological Foundations of Mental Health PDF

Module: Biological Foundations of Mental Health Week 4 Biological basis of learning, memory & cognition Topic 1 Learning, memory and synaptic plasticity - Part 4 of 4 Professor Peter Giese Department of Basic and Clinical Neuroscience Lecture transcript...

Module: Biological Foundations of Mental Health Week 4 Biological basis of learning, memory & cognition Topic 1 Learning, memory and synaptic plasticity - Part 4 of 4 Professor Peter Giese Department of Basic and Clinical Neuroscience Lecture transcript Slide 3 Welcome to our fourth part on synaptic plasticity and memory. So in this fourth part, we will finally discuss whether LTP in the hippocampus is important for learning and memory. So you will learn about approaches, how LTP was studied in this context, whether LTP is actually induced by training in a memory task. I will explain in a moment. And we will learn about methods-- how LTP has been manipulated, and whether this has impacted on learning and memory. For LTP-- LTP, as I mentioned in the second-- or first part, in particular-- is an interesting phenomenon, because it’s long-lasting synaptic plasticity. It’s an enhancement in synaptic plasticity. It has input specificity. That is also a very interesting property. It has associative properties, co-operative properties. So all of these properties make it a very intuitive model for learning and memory. But in addition, it also follows Hebb’s postulate. Slide 4 In 1949, the Canadian psychologist, Donald Hebb, wrote a book The Organization of Behavior. And in this book, he illustrated a principle in how he thought that neurons should behave when an animal learns new information. And he basically wrote is when an axon of neuron A excites neuron B, and repeatedly or persistently would do so, when some changes like growth processes, or metabolic changes would take place, in one or both cells, so that A’s efficiency to fire B is increased. So certainly speaking, LTP follows this phenomenon. Because when you have a high frequency stimulation, where basically, you enhance the synoptic transmission between neuron A and neuron B, and so the likelihood that neuron A fires neuron B is increased. It is strictly speaking, however, not the firing of what is enhanced, it’s the synaptic transmission that is enhanced. But loosely speaking, LTP follows the Hebb postulate. Slide 5 Up till this point, we have always talked about LTP after electrical stimulation. So LTP was induced by electrical stimulation. And the question is, really, does such type of synaptic plasticity really exist in a behaving brain? Transcripts by 3Playmedia Week 4 © King’s College London 2019 1.