All of our perceptions occur through our brain
right? All our memories are stored in our brain and when we have an experience
neurons are firing.
So if I was to recall that experience one would assume similar neurons are firing
right? We have to have structures in the brain that facilitate memory.
Hippocampus is the the main one that we would
would associate with learning new memories especially the explicit type.
Can't have any new memories without Hippocampus apparently
right but it's powerful structure that facilitates learning.
We talked about the Amygdala a little bit when we're talking about
one try learning right? A really powerful emotional experience will...
Emotion seem to be mediated through areas of the brain we call the Limbic System
right which includes the Amygdala. It seems to be really implicated
and having that one try learning experience for a really powerful emotion
associated with the experience tends to be easy to remember later.
That's a really negative experience: pain, fear
or sickness. It might only take one trial to make a learning
event permanent and it could become so permanent that you don't even remember the
source of it if it happened early in childhood
that you can get a phobia or a taste aversion that lasts on into your adulthood you don't
even remember
the source of it. You just know that you never liked that thing.
Well, long-term Potentiation we're looking at trying to
explain memory from a biological perspective.
We're really kind of trying to get at something it's hard to understand. We can
say what's happening,
why it's happening is another matter, but what seems to happen is when a neuron
stimulated,
we now know about neuro plasticity-we're not gonna get a whole bunch of new brain
cells-but the brain cells we have last
lifetimes and they can change physically.
They can grow dendritic structures. They can grow axonal structures
and they can pair them off. They can pull them back. So they are dynamic cells that respond
in every moment of our lives to every moment of our lives,
every thought you have, every emotion you have, every deed you do, everything you
perceive.
So you have a pattern of neuron firing and
neurons firing. Well, if you do the similar thing again
that same pattern would fire. If you do it again the same pattern would fire.
The idea is the more you fire that same pattern or similar patterns,
you're going to start getting to a point where it's easy to fire that pattern
and you've experience this when you learn something for a test.
When it first seems really confusing and you have to figure it out, but then you got
it figured out.
And you do it again and you do it again and you do it again
and then all you need is really just a prompt, a primer,
and you can remember it. The firing becomes a natural,
easy process because, physically speaking,
it's becoming facilitated as you do your learning. Again with the Amygdala seems
like you can facilitate deep learning
very quickly under certain circumstances without much
effort. It just happens that way. Seems to have survival value.
Consolidation is the evolution of a temporary,
not temperature, a temporary neural circuit meaning
the pattern on neurons firing into
a more enduring circuit. One that's easier to fire
and ultimately, when you look at conditioning memory that implicit memory
we talked about,
you don't even have to think about it. You just do it. When you drive
and start driving for the first time you get very conscious about all the things
you're doing,
but the more you do it the more you
fire the similar patterns of neurons and eventually you can drive somewhere
without even realizing you drove there.
You are like, "how did I get here I was talking listening to music daydreaming,"
but driving happened because that set of circuits
that is responsible for driving is so well-oiled, if you will,
that it functions pretty much on its own
and if you need to pay attention you will pay attention.