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Current Biology : CB Jul 2022The activity of dopamine neurons is critical for the ability to learn and update cue-reward associations. New work in rats shows that dopamine transients are also...
The activity of dopamine neurons is critical for the ability to learn and update cue-reward associations. New work in rats shows that dopamine transients are also critical for the formation of backward associations in which the reward precedes the neutral stimulus.
Topics: Animals; Association Learning; Cues; Dopamine; Dopaminergic Neurons; Learning; Rats; Reward
PubMed: 35882194
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.06.007 -
Current Opinion in Neurobiology Apr 2018For survival, organisms need the ability to flexibly modify their behavior. To achieve this, the brain is equipped with instructive brain circuits which trigger changes... (Review)
Review
For survival, organisms need the ability to flexibly modify their behavior. To achieve this, the brain is equipped with instructive brain circuits which trigger changes in neural connectivity and adaptive changes in behavior in response to environmental/internal challenges. Recent studies using a form of aversive associative learning termed fear conditioning have shed light on the neural mechanisms of instructive signaling. These studies demonstrate that fear learning is engaged through multiple, parallel aversive signaling pathways to the amygdala. Consistent with theoretical accounts of learning, activity in these circuits and behavioral learning is tightly regulated by the predictability of the aversive experience. However, in more complex learning conditions, these emotion circuits use a form of inference to approximate the appropriate reaction to danger. This suggests a revised view of how emotional learning systems represent aversive associations and how changes in these representations are instructed during learning.
Topics: Animals; Association Learning; Avoidance Learning; Brain; Humans; Memory; Neural Pathways
PubMed: 29518699
DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2018.02.010 -
Annual Review of Psychology 2013From the traditional perspective of associative learning theory, the hypothesis linking modifications of synaptic transmission to learning and memory is plausible. It is... (Review)
Review
From the traditional perspective of associative learning theory, the hypothesis linking modifications of synaptic transmission to learning and memory is plausible. It is less so from an information-processing perspective, in which learning is mediated by computations that make implicit commitments to physical and mathematical principles governing the domains where domain-specific cognitive mechanisms operate. We compare the properties of associative learning and memory to the properties of long-term potentiation, concluding that the properties of the latter do not explain the fundamental properties of the former. We briefly review the neuroscience of reinforcement learning, emphasizing the representational implications of the neuroscientific findings. We then review more extensively findings that confirm the existence of complex computations in three information-processing domains: probabilistic inference, the representation of uncertainty, and the representation of space. We argue for a change in the conceptual framework within which neuroscientists approach the study of learning mechanisms in the brain.
Topics: Animals; Association Learning; Humans; Memory; Neurosciences; Reinforcement, Psychology; Synaptic Transmission
PubMed: 22804775
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143807 -
Trends in Cognitive Sciences Sep 2019What are the principles that govern whether neural representations move apart (differentiate) or together (integrate) as a function of learning? According to supervised... (Review)
Review
What are the principles that govern whether neural representations move apart (differentiate) or together (integrate) as a function of learning? According to supervised learning models that are trained to predict outcomes in the world, integration should occur when two stimuli predict the same outcome. Numerous findings support this, but - paradoxically - some recent fMRI studies have found that pairing different stimuli with the same associate causes differentiation, not integration. To explain these and related findings, we argue that supervised learning needs to be supplemented with unsupervised learning that is driven by spreading activation in a U-shaped way, such that inactive memories are not modified, moderate activation of memories causes weakening (leading to differentiation), and higher activation causes strengthening (leading to integration).
Topics: Association Learning; Humans; Machine Learning; Mental Recall
PubMed: 31358438
DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.06.007 -
Trends in Cognitive Sciences Jul 2017Learning about potential threats is critical for survival. Learned fear responses are acquired either through direct experiences or indirectly through social... (Review)
Review
Learning about potential threats is critical for survival. Learned fear responses are acquired either through direct experiences or indirectly through social transmission. Social fear learning (SFL), also known as vicarious fear learning, is a paradigm successfully used for studying the transmission of threat information between individuals. Animal and human studies have begun to elucidate the behavioral, neural and molecular mechanisms of SFL. Recent research suggests that social learning mechanisms underlie a wide range of adaptive and maladaptive phenomena, from supporting flexible avoidance in dynamic environments to intergenerational transmission of trauma and anxiety disorders. This review discusses recent advances in SFL studies and their implications for basic, social and clinical sciences.
Topics: Animals; Anxiety Disorders; Association Learning; Avoidance Learning; Fear; Humans; Learning; Models, Animal; Models, Biological; Social Behavior; Social Learning
PubMed: 28545935
DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2017.04.010 -
Quarterly Journal of Experimental... Feb 2019
Topics: Association Learning; Humans; Psychology
PubMed: 30803327
DOI: 10.1177/1747021818814401 -
Cortex; a Journal Devoted To the Study... Jan 2013Recent neuropsychological studies show substantial cognitive deficits in patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Schizophrenia (SC) overlaps in terms of...
INTRODUCTION
Recent neuropsychological studies show substantial cognitive deficits in patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Schizophrenia (SC) overlaps in terms of neurobehavioural symptoms with FTD. Probabilistic association learning, which is thought to assay fronto-striatal function, is well documented to elicit impairment in SC and has not been investigated in FTD to date; this study compared FTD, SC and a healthy comparison group on probabilistic association learning to determine the extent to which FTD patients were similar in performance to SC patients.
METHODS
Twenty FTD patients, 24 SC patients and 26 healthy controls were assessed using the probabilistic association learning weather prediction test. FTD patients were also divided into behavioural and language variants for comparison to the healthy group.
RESULTS
FTD patients were impaired during probabilistic association learning in comparison to healthy controls. There was no difference in performance between the FTD and SC groups. FTD behavioural variants performed significantly worse than the healthy comparison group, while FTD language variants did not differ from the healthy comparison group.
CONCLUSIONS
This study provides the first evidence for impaired probabilistic association learning in FTD which is of an equivalent degree to that seen in SC. These results support recent structural neuroimaging studies showing fronto-striatal abnormalities in FTD and suggest that fronto-striatal dysfunction may contribute to cognitive deficits in a significant proportion of people with FTD.
Topics: Adult; Aged; Association Learning; Female; Frontotemporal Dementia; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Neuropsychological Tests; Schizophrenic Psychology
PubMed: 22030261
DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2011.09.011 -
Journal of Comparative Psychology... May 2012Research on social learning in animals has revealed a rich variety of cases where animals--from caddis fly larvae to chimpanzees--acquire biologically important... (Review)
Review
Research on social learning in animals has revealed a rich variety of cases where animals--from caddis fly larvae to chimpanzees--acquire biologically important information by observing the actions of others. A great deal is known about the adaptive functions of social learning, but very little about the cognitive mechanisms that make it possible. Even in the case of imitation, a type of social learning studied in both comparative psychology and cognitive science, there has been minimal contact between the two disciplines. Social learning has been isolated from cognitive science by two longstanding assumptions: that it depends on a set of special-purpose modules--cognitive adaptations for social living; and that these learning mechanisms are largely distinct from the processes mediating human social cognition. Recent research challenges these assumptions by showing that social learning covaries with asocial learning; occurs in solitary animals; and exhibits the same features in diverse species, including humans. Drawing on this evidence, I argue that social and asocial learning depend on the same basic learning mechanisms; these are adapted for the detection of predictive relationships in all natural domains; and they are associative mechanisms--processes that encode information for long-term storage by forging excitatory and inhibitory links between event representations. Thus, human and nonhuman social learning are continuous, and social learning is adaptively specialized--it becomes distinctively "social"--only when input mechanisms (perceptual, attentional, and motivational processes) are phylogenetically or ontogenetically tuned to other agents.
Topics: Adaptation, Psychological; Animals; Association Learning; Biological Evolution; Humans; Imitative Behavior; Learning; Social Behavior
PubMed: 21895355
DOI: 10.1037/a0025180 -
Behavioural Brain Research 1996This paper presents a review of studies dealing with the effects of 5-HT agonists and antagonists on learning as measured by classical conditioning of the rabbit's... (Review)
Review
This paper presents a review of studies dealing with the effects of 5-HT agonists and antagonists on learning as measured by classical conditioning of the rabbit's nictitating membrane response or the conditioned avoidance response in the rat. These studies indicate that the 5-HT2A/2C receptors are importantly involved in learning. In these behavioral paradigms, enhancement of learning is only produced by drugs that are agonists at the 5-HT2A/2C receptors, and this enhancement is only blocked by drugs that are antagonists at these receptors. In addition, evidence is presented for the existence of two classes of 5-HT2A/2C antagonists consisting of negative antagonists that retard learning when given alone (ritanserin, MDL-11,939, pizotifen and cyproheptadine) and those that are neutral antagonists in that they have no effect on learning (ketanserin, mianserin, BOL and LY-53,857). However, both the neutral and negative antagonists are equally capable of blocking the enhancement of learning produced by 5-HT2A/2C agonists. It was concluded that 5-HT2A and/or 5-HT2C agonists may provide a new approach to the treatment of learning disorders in aging or Alzheimer's disease.
Topics: Animals; Association Learning; Avoidance Learning; Conditioning, Classical; Rabbits; Rats; Serotonin; Serotonin Antagonists; Serotonin Receptor Agonists
PubMed: 8788476
DOI: 10.1016/0166-4328(96)00068-x -
Trends in Cognitive Sciences May 2014Recent theory and experiments offer a new solution regarding how infant learners may break into word learning by using cross-situational statistics to find the... (Review)
Review
Recent theory and experiments offer a new solution regarding how infant learners may break into word learning by using cross-situational statistics to find the underlying word-referent mappings. Computational models demonstrate the in-principle plausibility of this statistical learning solution and experimental evidence shows that infants can aggregate and make statistically appropriate decisions from word-referent co-occurrence data. We review these contributions and then identify the gaps in current knowledge that prevent a confident conclusion about whether cross-situational learning is the mechanism through which infants break into word learning. We propose an agenda to address that gap that focuses on detailing the statistics in the learning environment and the cognitive processes that make use of those statistics.
Topics: Acoustic Stimulation; Association Learning; Humans; Infant; Language Development; Photic Stimulation; Verbal Learning; Vocabulary
PubMed: 24637154
DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2014.02.007