What is the role of sleep in learning and memory?
sleep-deprived participants showed poorer performance, depressed brain activation in the left temporal region and heightened activation in prefrontal and parietal regions. There was also increased activation in areas of the brain that are involved in sust
REM sleep
REM sleep occurs in cycles of about 90-120 minutes throughout the night, and it accounts for up to 20-25% of total sleep time in adult humans, although the proportion decreases with age (a newborn baby may spend 80% of total sleep time in the REM stage).
What occurs during REM sleep? (EEG & psychologically)
Dreams occur during this stage (wake more easily)
Dreams during REM, mentalizing in S3/4
Slow Wave Sleep
Stages 3+4
Decreases in adolescence
EEG activity is synchronized, producing slow waves with a frequency of less than 1 Hz and a relatively high amplitude. The first section of the wave signifies a down state, which is an inhibition period in which the neu
What occurs during SWS? (EEG & psychologically)
moderate muscle tone, slow or absent eye movement, and lack of genital activity
General structure of sleep. (i.e., what are the components of sleep and when do certain types of sleep happen?)
state of unconsciousness
EEG reveals its complexity
awake= low amplitude, high frequency
sleep= high amplitude, low frequency
dreams occur during REM
Stage 1
When we are preparing to drift off, we go through Alpha and Theta, and have periods of dreaminess, almost like daydreaming, except we are beginning to fall asleep.
-During this stage, it's not unusual to experience strange and extremely vivid sensations o
Stage 2
The second stage of sleep lasts about 20 minutes. Our brain begins to produce very short periods of rapid, rhythmic brain wave activity known as Sleep Spindles. Body temperature begins dropping and heart rate starts slowing down.
Stage 3
Deep, slow brain waves known as Delta Waves begin to emerge during this stage. It is a transitional period between light sleep and a very deep sleep.
Stage 4
This is sometimes referred to as Delta Sleep because of the delta waves that occur during this time. Stage Four is a deep sleep that lasts for about 30 minutes. Sleepwalking and bed-wetting typically happen at the end of Stage Four sleep.
Stage 5
Most dreaming occurs during Stage Five, known as REM. REM sleep is characterized by eye movement, increased respiration rate and increased brain activity. REM sleep is also referred to as paradoxical sleep because, while the brain and other body systems b
Place cells
What are they?
neurons in the hippocampus that fire when the animal occupies a specific location within its environment. As different place cells have different place fields (locations where they fire), they are thought to provide a cognitive map for the rat
Where are they found? (place cells)
hippocampus
What might their role be in learning? (place cells)
Place cells are thought, collectively, to act as a cognitive representation of a specific location in space, known as a cognitive map. Place cells work with other types of neurons in the hippocampus and surrounding regions to perform this kind of spatial
How does sleep affect performance on visual perception tasks? Be specific
Studies in the effects of sleep on visual perception skills have found that REM and slow wave sleep (the third, and final, NREM stage) had the biggest impact.
Texture discrimination task
Found adaptation of response
Restored if task is changed, OR
By taki
How does napping affect performance on visual perception tasks?
Increases-"recharge
What is the role of hippocampus in memory consolidation?
The hippocampus is involved in the recognition of place and the (long-term) consolidation of contextual memories, and is part of a region called the medial temporal lobe (MTL)
Decreases with stress
Memory is retained in the hippocampus for up to one week
Know concept of Long-term Potentiation (LTP) -cells that wire together, fire together (Hebbian synapse)
cellular mechanism by which we learn
a persistent strengthening of synapses based on recent patterns of activity. These are patterns of synaptic activity that produce a long-lasting increase in signal transmission between two neurons
LTP is widely conside
Gender differences in sleep cycle in adolescence
Girls obtained longer true sleep times, and their sleep was characterized by greater percentages of motionless sleep
Women had significantly shorter stage 1 and non-rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep during the nocturnal sleep time. (REM is the fifth of five
Delayed sleep cycle in adolescence
Partial sleep deprivation results from the tendency of adolescents to delay their sleeping and waking times
is caused not just by changes in the adolescent's habits but also by physiological changes that occur during pubertal development
Consequences of not sleeping enough (Be specific)
impacts of drowsy driving, (there is definitely more)
Educational implications? (Be specific)
classroom impacts, early start times
Relationship between SES and Cognitive Functions (e.g. Language, visuospatial, memory, cognitive control, working memory reward processing)
SES accounted for variance in all domains except reward processing
substantial additional analyses rule out various artifacts
SES effects on cognitive conflict mediated by language skills
home and school environment modulated SES effects
- SES --> linguis
SES and Brain structure (cortical thickness) though development
males demonstrating a thicker cortex in frontopolar regions at younger ages and subsequent greater cortical thinning than females during adolescence. It has also been reported that females demonstrate more rapid cortical thinning than males in specific co
Relationship between family SES and brain functioning (behavioral and structural MRI)
social causation may explain SES-related effects on neurocognitive development in childhood and adolescence, which over time may inhibit socioeconomic achievement and thus, SES in adulthood. In addition, it is possible that genomic variation in concert wi
Role of stress
stress has a differential impact as a function of age: leads to decrease in dendritic arborization and decrease in dendritic spines on cell
youth recovers well, but becomes harder with age
middle and old age have less ability to recover
HPA Axis: What is it?
a complex set of direct influences and feedback interactions among three endocrine glands: the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland (a pea-shaped structure located below the hypothalamus), and the adrenal (also called "suprarenal") glands (small, conical org
HPA Axis - Role?
controls reactions to stress and regulates many body processes, including digestion, the immune system, mood and emotions, sexuality, and energy storage and expenditure. It is the common mechanism for interactions among glands, hormones, and parts of the
Selective listening task and attention ERPs (Event Related Potential)
children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds show deficits in aspects of attention, including a reduced ability to filter irrelevant information and to suppress prepotent responses
Children whose mothers had lower levels of educational attainment (no col
What do these tell us about SES, stress and cognitive functioning? Can preschool program change attention?
Parent emotional outcomes
Increased turn-taking
Decreased stress
Child emotional outcomes
Decreased problem behavior
Increased social skills
Child cognitive outcomes
Increased language
Increased non-verbal IQ
Does preschool affect outcomes?
Long term effects
Economics of preschool
Return on investment
Evolutionary purpose of adolescent brain and behavior
facilitate separation from family
less inbreeding= evolutionary advantage
risky behavior by some good for the group (even if potentially bad for the individual)
Disorders that tend to appear in adolescence and theories on why
schizophrenia
depression
anxiety
substance abuse
eating disorders
NOT autism, ADHD, alzheimer's
Adolescence is characterized by major changes in the neural systems that subserve higher cognitive functions, reasoning and interpersonal interactions, cogniti
Grey Matter Density (GMD)
During Adolescence
Grey matter peaks during childhood, declines in adolescence
Brain metabolism during adolescence
maturation
White matter during adolescence
volumes of white matter show a rather clear linear increase throughout childhood and adolescence, with the maximum volumes reached often as late as in the third decade of life
PFC integrates cognition and emotion
dlPFC - cool aspects
vmPFC - hot aspects (connectivity w/ AMY and hypothalamus)
Discrepancy between performance on cold and hot tasks in adolescence
Behaviors you're willing to engage in depending on whether you're alone (cool) or in a group (hot)
Role of family obligation
family obligation modulates reward sensitivity
as family obligation increases, right and left ventral striatum decreases
Limbic system and PFC development
Go-No Go with beep" method
"Stop signal reaction time"
Index cognitive control->inhibition
poor vs. good stoppers on Iowa Gambling Task
Most healthy participants sample cards from each deck, and after about 40 or 50 selections are fairly good at sticking
Know Reward system circuitry
reversal learning task: two decks of cards (one good one bad), after successful learning, good and back deck contingencies are switched --> count successful reversals
delay of gratification: noisy present wrapping with the child's back turned, measure tim
Cambridge Gambling Task
dissociates risk taking from impulsivity, because in the ascending bet condition the participant who wants to make a risky bet has to wait patiently for it to appear
On each trial, the participant is presented with a row of ten boxes across the top of the
Social Brain
Regions
Role of expertise in FFA processing
Know Johnson's hypothesis on face processing/orienting
Morton & Johnson study
Infinity for faces at young age->visual perception (pre-exposed to looking at faces)
Theory of Mind
Regions implicated
Medial prefrontal cortex
False belief tasks
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
Prevalence, variability on the spectrum
Amygdala in ASD?
Ideas about amygdala's role in ASD
Know Jones and Klin (2013) study - Eye Gaze
Early Brain Development in ASD
Overgrowth
Regional hyper grey matter density
Long-Term Potentiation (Hebb quote)
cellular mechanism by which we learn
Plasticity
sensitive periods in early brain development
some skills peak earlier (vision, hearing) and other later (peer social skills, numbers)
cortices that develop later have synaptic densities that peak later
PFC latest to develop behaviorally and neurologically
Monkey somatosensory plasticity studies
monkey somatosensory cortex, that long-term digit amputation, arm amputation or even wrist fracture can alter the distribution of intracortical axons
In monkeys with arm or digit amputation, corticocortical connections increase their horizontally span by
String player study
location of dipoles of fingers shifted medially vs. controls
musicians have greater length of dipole
dipole strength in string players > controls
smallest dipole in thumb (D1), largest in pinky (D5)
only true if violin player keeps practicing
Cab driving and hippocampus
hippocampus very active when verbally reciting directions
increased voxel volume for posterior hippocampus correlated with increased time as a taxi driver
decreased voxel volume for anterior hippocampus correlated with increased time as a taxi driver
Juggling and the brain
Enhances connections
leads to changes in the white matter of the brain
Plasticity
Visual and auditory cortex in blind individuals
loss of vision does not lead to permanent inactivation of visual cortex
VWFA reorganization
Touch and vision of touch areas overlap
Braille activates visual cortex
Lip reading activates auditory cortex
Monkey and tools studies
Learn how to use them
Exercise and the brain
BDNF and molecular cascade leading to synaptogenesis and neurogenesis
Exercise and Achievement in Children
Exercise increases brain function, mood, learning
TMS
creates rapidly changing magnetic field --> electrical field scrambles neural activity
disrupts or facilitates neural activity
TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation): used for single pulse
rTMS (repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation): used for rep
tDCS
transcranial direct current stimulation
uses direct electrical currents to stimulate specific parts of the brain
fairly effective in combating depression, anxiety, and insomnia
Smart drugs
drugs, supplements, or other substances that improve cognitive function, particularly executive functions, memory, creativity, or motivation, in healthy individuals
Future role of genetic testing
Eg COMT gene
Differences between:
Brain supported
Brain derived
Brain driven
Brain inspired
- evidence from neuroscience supports intervention
- intervention derived from neuroscience data and theories
- manipulate brain activity directly to change behavior (smart drugs, tDCS)
- most current products, based loosely on brain data and theories, bu
Next steps for the field of MBE
How educational theories can use neuroscientific data
Challenges and opportunities
SES and stress
People in higher SES have higher cognitive control (brain development)
Low-SES circumstances (lower brain volume)->tied to stress (cortisol)
Selective auditory listening ERP task
High SES backgrounds are more able to inhibit ones they're not supposed to l
Preschool
$1 more into preschool->save $8.70 in long term
Not rely on government programs
Government saves money long term
Cab driving
Cab drivers->create new route every single time
Bus drivers->same route over and over again
Significant brain differences between the two
Longer cab driver worked, bigger posterior hippocampus became
Smaller anterior hippocampus became
Vice versa for bus