SAMPLE FINAL Exam NSCI 349

NAME (1 point) ________________________

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Part 1. T/F (1 point each) I will modify and rearrange 20 of these for the final.

  1. When a response to a frequently repeated stimulus diminishes over time it is said that the animal has sensitized to the stimulus.
  2. Memory that is spared in amnesics is called working memory.
  3. Changes in activity have been seen in the motor cortex and the RCB1 nucleus of a cat who has learned the association between a glabellar tap and a sound.
  4. One of the pathways that processes light information, as discussed for heart rate conditioning in the pigeon, involves the retina, optic tectum, Nucleus Rotundus, and the ectostriatum.
  5. Conditioned inhibitors can be produced by backward conditioning.
  6. If reinforcement in an instrumental conditioning paradigm is given after every 10th response this is referred to as a fixed ratio schedule.
  7. Axons from the dorsal accessory nucleus of the inferior olive synapse on purkinje cells in the ipsilateral neocortex.
  8. Ramon y Cajal first proposed that memories were formed by changes in synaptic strength.
  9. Gary Lynch proposed the 'Law of Effect' which says that whether a behavior will continue or extinquish depends on the consequences of that behavior.
  10. Amnesics have shed no light on the understanding of how humans store information.
  11. Lashely demonstrated that the memory for running a maze could not be localized to any specific region of the neocortex.
  12. One of the characteristics of habituation in Aplysia is that the response will recover if preceeded by a novel stimulus. This is referred to as dishabituation and requires the activity of PKC.
  13. Delay conditioning is the most powerful and quickest way to associate a CS with a US.
  14. Direct stimulation of the pericruciate cortex can substitute for a UCS in the cat eyeblink paradigm.
  15. It has been reported, by some labs, that unilateral lesions of the cerebellar cortex abolish and prevent reacquisition of a conditioned eyelid response in the cat.
  16. Climbing fibers release GABA onto the deep cerebellar nuclei.
  17. The Rescorla-Wagner theory does not, in its present form take into account any changes that may be occurring in the salience of the CS or US during conditioning.
  18. The medial geniculate nucleus receives auditory information from the inferior olive.
  19. Electrical stimulation of axons from the neocortex have been shown to produce changes in synaptic strength in adjacent regions of the neocortex, red nucleus and the cerebellum.
  20. The NMDA receptor is permeable to Ca2+ and only opens in the presence of both cAMP and glutamate.
  21. Processes involved in the development of the nervous system are completely unrelated to the proposed biochemical mechanism of learning in adults.
  22. One of the first proponents of an associationist mechanism for storing information was John Hume.
  23. CREB is something you scrap off of your windshield in the summer.
  24. If one considers the nervous system as a parallel distributed network that becomes associated with other networks at the same time and is influenced by other networks of activity that have occurred previously we can postulate mechanisms for work retrieval problems.
  25. When a protein synthesis blocker is injected into an animal before training it to run a maze for food the animal does not retain any of the knowledge of that experience assayed by testing the animal 24 hours later in the same apparatus.
  26. The hippocampus is critically involved in procedural learning?
  27. The "dual process" theory of habituation proposes that both increases and decreases in the mechanisms for transmitting information across the synapse occur on each presentation of a given stimulus but that the increases are not cumulative and eventually reduce to zero while the decreases continue to occur as stimuli are presented over time.
  28. Decreases in the ability of the sensory apparatus to register the stimulus and fatigue of the motor system are two problems that must be controlled for when performing habituation experiments?
  29. Cell firing in deep cerebellar nuclei increases as conditioning of the nictitating membrane response proceeds because the efficacy of parallel fibers synapsing on purkinje cells is increased as a result of the association between the US and CS.
  30. Cell firing in the pericruciate cortex decreses as eyeblink conditioning continues in the cat.
  31. When simultaneously conditioning with a CS that already elicits a CR and one that the animal has never been exposed to, the fact that, even after extensive training, the novel stimulus doesn't produce a CR is called overshadowing.
  32. Classical conditioning is a paradigm where the animal must be awake and responsive.
  33. Structural changes have been seen 1) in the CA1 region after electrical stimulation of the schaffer collaterals, 2) in the neocortex when an animal is exposed to an enriched environment, 3) when a bird is learning or producing its particular song, and 4) in aplysia after short-term habituation has been induced.
  34. Specificity of axonal inputs to a particular region is produced by the concerted actions of 2) apoptosis and 2) activity dependent rearrangement.

Part 2. Short answer (3 points each) Discuss one example where the following molecules have been implicated in learning and/or memory and the role that the molocule plays in learning and memory in that example. Keep it short but coherent. ( I will choose 8 of the ones listed below for the final and ask you to answer 4 of those 8.)

  1. Ca2+ (among other sources read the Bliss & Collingridge article)
  2. cAMP
  3. S-100
  4. clathrin
  5. NCAM
  6. apCREB2
  7. calcium/calmodulin sensitive adenylate cyclase
  8. PLC
  9. NGF
  10. glutamate (among other sources read the Bliss & Collingridge article)
  11. 5-HT
  12. Tyrosine kinases (among other sources read the Bliss & Collingridge article)
  13. AMPA receptors (among other sources read the Bliss & Collingridge article)
  14. PP2B
  15. nitric oxide sythase (Bliss & Collingridge article)


Part 3. Short answer (4 points each) What is the connection between the following items and the study of learning and memory. I will select 10 of the many I've included here and ask you to answer 6 of those 10.

  1. Ocular dominance columns
  2. Hear rate conditioning in the pigeon.
  3. mutant mice
  4. intermediate and medial region of the hyperstriatum ventrale (IMHV)
  5. bird song
  6. 17 beta estradiol
  7. Robustus archistriatalis (RA)
  8. Magnocellular nucleus (MAN)
  9. Korsakoff's Syndrome
  10. Pavlov/Penfield/W. James/R. Rescorla
  11. Archistriatum
  12. Changeaux (from the video at the beginning of the semester)
  13. Morris Water maze
  14. Strabismus
  15. Wimultaneous conditioning
  16. Serial postiion phenomenon
  17. Enriched environments
  18. L29
  19. Galen
  20. quantal analysis
  21. Walden 2

PART 4. short answer (6points) What biochemical processes have been implicated in learning and memory based on experiments done on these preparations. A list would be acceptable. I will ask you to do 1 of 2. The two I present on the final will be taken from this list.

  1. Hippocampal slices
  2. Aplysia
  3. Drosophila



PART 5. Longer Answer (8 points each) Use complete sentences and coherent logic when answering this set of questions. I will have 4 of these types of questions - 3 from these 7 and another mystery question.

  1. Why do we suspect that habituation in aplysia is a monosynaptic phenomena?
  2. Give a real world example of the evolutionary significance of habituation?
  3. Both eyeblink conditioning in the cat and the rabbit seem to be similar. 1) What empirical evidence suggests the engram underlying these two phenomena may differ (lesion and cell firing studies)? 2) What might explain this discrepency?
  4. 1) What does the data graphed in Fig 1 imply about the lesion site's role in the Nictitating Membrane (NM) response? 2) What does this data imply about the anatomy of the system that is involved in learning the NM?
    Fig. 1
  5. 1) Fill in the diagram of Lisman's LTP/LTD model (Fig. 2) . Letters A-H designate the where data is missing. 2) Based on Lisman's hypothesis, if 100 uM of calcium is considered a "high level" of intracellular calcium then what would happen to the phosphorylation state of the AMPA receptors if synaptic activation opened 11 NMDA receptors and the opening of each NMDA receptor produces a 10uM rise in intracellular calcium concentration ( assume that the calcium rise produced by each NMDA receptor is additive)? 3) Based on Lisman's hypothesis, how is the level of synaptic efficacy maintained after intracellular calcium levels return to normal (nM range)?
    Fig. 2
  6. 1) What is the experimental protocal being used in to generate the data in Figure 3? 2) What does the data in the Figure 3 suggest about LTD? Be specific and place marks on the portions of the graph that support your conclusion(s).
    Fig. 3
  7. There are various molocules that would be sensitive to the coincidence of 2 different inputs. Can you name a few of them and give examples of how they would work?

Part 6. Creative question/answer (6 points) The always present and forever loved 'Devise your own question on a topic that was not covered in the exam but was covered in class or in the readings (show me what you know). Provide an answer for this question.'