Neurobiology

As a result of reading, classroom instruction, and critical thinking exercises, students should be able to understand, evaluate, and explain how: • Learning versus evolution enables organisms to adapt to their environment • Work in philosophy and biology identified key factors and problems, as well as how these two disciplines interacted to shape the field of animal learning • Scientific versus nonscientific approaches have been used to study learning • Classical conditioning differs from instrumental/operant conditioning • The different approaches to behaviorism • Theories and metaphors are used as tools to explore learning phenomena • Animal learning informs us about general learning phenomena • Classical and instrumental conditioning occur in everyday learning phenomena • The comparison between natural selection and "fitness" from a learning perspective and from an evolutionary perspective • The difference between fixed action patterns and associative learned behaviors • The difficulty of establishing the innateness of a behavior • The way in which habituation occurs, its significance, and how it is distinguished from other associative learning phenomena • The occurrence of instrumental contingencies (i.e., reward, negative reinforcement, punishment, omission, extinction, spontaneous recovery) as both a procedure and as a behavioral outcome, and the importance of the distinction between the procedure and the behavioral outcome • The role of shaping in instrumental contingencies • The phenomena of taste aversion learning, territorial and reproductive cueing, fear conditioning, drug tolerance, and sign tracking and the ways these illustrate associative learning contingencies and principles • How extinction, punishment, omission, and habituation change response probability as well as the benefits versus disadvantages of each procedure’s impact on behavior • The impact of S* parameters on strength and rate of learning; and • The ways in which preparedness or biological constraints influence what can be learned and the ease of learning • Behavioral flexibility and adaptability can arise from innate behaviors and everyday events through the process of classical conditioning • S-S learning and S-R learning differ • Arranging the sequence of CS-CS and CS-US pairings in second-order conditioning and sensory preconditioning produce associations that provide insights into what is learned • Standard classical conditioning preparations (i.e., eyeblink, CER, autoshaping, and taste aversions) are used to discover and test classical conditioning phenomena and predictions • Different procedures for pairing CS and US (e.g., delay, trace, simultaneous, backward) affect what is learned • Variables such as timing, novelty, trial spacing, preexposure, and stimulus intensity affect conditioning • Pseudoconditioning and sensitization differ from true classical conditioning • Latent inhibition and conditioned inhibition differ • Summation, retardation, and bidirectional response tests are used to distinguish conditioned inhibition from habituation, preexposure, and extinction effects • Different conditioning procedures can be used to produce either conditioned excitors or conditioned inhibitors and • Taste aversion and blocking phenomena are used to evaluate the parsimony and validity of contingency versus contiguity explanations of classical conditioning • The Rescorla-Wagner model’s use of US salience to explain and predict conditioning phenomena such as blocking and unblocking, conditioned inhibition, extinction, and CS overexpectation • Why the Rescorla-Wagner model has difficulty explaining sensory preconditioning, higher-order conditioning, extinction of inhibition, Hall-Pearce negative transfer, and latent inhibition • Comparator theories’ explanations and predictions regarding conditioning phenomena such as blocking and unblocking, conditioned inhibition, extinction, sensory preconditioning, higher-order conditioning, Hall-Pearce negative transfer, and latent inhibition • The Mackintosh model’s use of attentional variables to explain and predict conditioning phenomena such as blocking and unblocking, conditioned inhibition, extinction, sensory preconditioning, higher-order conditioning, Hall-Pearce negative transfer, and latent inhibition • The Pearce-Hall model’s use of CS salience to explain and predict conditioning phenomena such as blocking and unblocking, conditioned inhibition, extinction, sensory preconditioning, higher-order conditioning, Hall-Pearce negative transfer, and latent inhibition • Modern memory models using variables such as self-generated priming, retrieval-generated priming, rehearsal, and retrieval • The impact of network schemas on CS and US associability • The modification of the basic Rescorla-Wagner model that resulted in the SOP model, and how the incorporation of memory processing assumptions expanded the model’s predictive capacity • The further modification of the SOP model into AESOP by means of a distinction between sensory and emotive learning processes, and the expanded predictive capacity that resulted and basic neuropharmacology

The exam is open to all students with a keen interest in animal behavior and learning

The Professor will provide with therelevant articles along with the slides (updated every year)

every Monday and Wednesday

The exam consists of multiple choice and open questions

The module consists of frontal classes scheduled every Monday and Wednesday

As a result of reading, classroom instruction, and critical thinking exercises, students should be able to understand, evaluate, and explain how: • Learning versus evolution enables organisms to adapt to their environment • Work in philosophy and biology identified key factors and problems, as well as how these two disciplines interacted to shape the field of animal learning • Scientific versus nonscientific approaches have been used to study learning • Classical conditioning differs from instrumental/operant conditioning • The different approaches to behaviorism • Theories and metaphors are used as tools to explore learning phenomena • Animal learning informs us about general learning phenomena • Classical and instrumental conditioning occur in everyday learning phenomena • The comparison between natural selection and "fitness" from a learning perspective and from an evolutionary perspective • The difference between fixed action patterns and associative learned behaviors • The difficulty of establishing the innateness of a behavior • The way in which habituation occurs, its significance, and how it is distinguished from other associative learning phenomena • The occurrence of instrumental contingencies (i.e., reward, negative reinforcement, punishment, omission, extinction, spontaneous recovery) as both a procedure and as a behavioral outcome, and the importance of the distinction between the procedure and the behavioral outcome • The role of shaping in instrumental contingencies • The phenomena of taste aversion learning, territorial and reproductive cueing, fear conditioning, drug tolerance, and sign tracking and the ways these illustrate associative learning contingencies and principles • How extinction, punishment, omission, and habituation change response probability as well as the benefits versus disadvantages of each procedure’s impact on behavior • The impact of S* parameters on strength and rate of learning; and • The ways in which preparedness or biological constraints influence what can be learned and the ease of learning • Behavioral flexibility and adaptability can arise from innate behaviors and everyday events through the process of classical conditioning • S-S learning and S-R learning differ • Arranging the sequence of CS-CS and CS-US pairings in second-order conditioning and sensory preconditioning produce associations that provide insights into what is learned • Standard classical conditioning preparations (i.e., eyeblink, CER, autoshaping, and taste aversions) are used to discover and test classical conditioning phenomena and predictions • Different procedures for pairing CS and US (e.g., delay, trace, simultaneous, backward) affect what is learned • Variables such as timing, novelty, trial spacing, preexposure, and stimulus intensity affect conditioning • Pseudoconditioning and sensitization differ from true classical conditioning • Latent inhibition and conditioned inhibition differ • Summation, retardation, and bidirectional response tests are used to distinguish conditioned inhibition from habituation, preexposure, and extinction effects • Different conditioning procedures can be used to produce either conditioned excitors or conditioned inhibitors and • Taste aversion and blocking phenomena are used to evaluate the parsimony and validity of contingency versus contiguity explanations of classical conditioning • The Rescorla-Wagner model’s use of US salience to explain and predict conditioning phenomena such as blocking and unblocking, conditioned inhibition, extinction, and CS overexpectation • Why the Rescorla-Wagner model has difficulty explaining sensory preconditioning, higher-order conditioning, extinction of inhibition, Hall-Pearce negative transfer, and latent inhibition • Comparator theories’ explanations and predictions regarding conditioning phenomena such as blocking and unblocking, conditioned inhibition, extinction, sensory preconditioning, higher-order conditioning, Hall-Pearce negative transfer, and latent inhibition • The Mackintosh model’s use of attentional variables to explain and predict conditioning phenomena such as blocking and unblocking, conditioned inhibition, extinction, sensory preconditioning, higher-order conditioning, Hall-Pearce negative transfer, and latent inhibition • The Pearce-Hall model’s use of CS salience to explain and predict conditioning phenomena such as blocking and unblocking, conditioned inhibition, extinction, sensory preconditioning, higher-order conditioning, Hall-Pearce negative transfer, and latent inhibition • Modern memory models using variables such as self-generated priming, retrieval-generated priming, rehearsal, and retrieval • The impact of network schemas on CS and US associability • The modification of the basic Rescorla-Wagner model that resulted in the SOP model, and how the incorporation of memory processing assumptions expanded the model’s predictive capacity • The further modification of the SOP model into AESOP by means of a distinction between sensory and emotive learning processes, and the expanded predictive capacity that resulted and basic neuropharmacology

The exam is open to all students with a keen interest in animal behavior and learning

The Professor will provide with therelevant articles along with the slides (updated every year)

every Monday and Wednesday

The exam consists of multiple choice and open questions

The module consists of frontal classes scheduled every Monday and Wednesday