PSYC 304 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Classical Conditioning, Adaptation, Spatial Memory
Document Summary
Psyc 304: chapter 17 learning and memory. The amygdala and fear: amygdala -> learning about stimuli that are associated with bad things and how to prepare for those things. Plays an essential role in learning to be afraid of potentially harmful things: fear is an adaptive trait that keeps us from dying, some stimuli evoke an innate fear response (no learning required) Snakes, spiders, big moving objects, novelty: animals or humans with lesions to the amygdala display fearless like behaviors. E. g. primates innately scared of snakes, but lesions of the amygdala will abolish this fear: with many other harmful things in our environment, we learn to be afraid of them. Pavlovian conditioning (classical conditioning: virtually all animals display pavlovian conditioning. Helps organism prepare for biologically significant events in response to cues that predict those events. Learning mechanism -> start digestive processes in preparation (salivation: 4 main elements:
