Title : Brain dynamics of normal and abnormal learning and memory consolidation: Multiple hippocampal functions in cognitive, adaptively-timed cognitive-emotional, and navigational learning
Abstract:
This talk provides a self-contained summary of neural models of normal and abnormal learning and memory consolidation in which the hippocampus plays an important role. As heuristically described in the Multiple Trace Theory of Moscovitch and Nadel, the role of the hippocampus in some learning processes is time-limited, but in others more enduring. This theme raises the question of why and how several different kinds of learning processes all include hippocampal resources. The talk will describe neural models of cognitive, adaptively-timed cognitive-emotional, and spatial navigational processes that all involve the hippocampus in learning and memory consolidation processes, but which differ in the extent of hippocampal involvement as memory consolidation proceeds. It hereby provides mechanistic explanations of the differences that have been experimentally reported about hippocampal involvement. Many psychological and neurobiological data are explained in a unified way by these.
