Calpain-1 (CANP1) has been shown to play a critical role in synaptic plasticity and learning and memory, as its deletion in mice results in impairment in theta-burst stimulation (TBS)-induced LTP and various forms of learning and memory. Likewise, PHLPP1 (aka SCOP) has also been found to participate in learning and memory, as PHLPP1 overexpression…

Learners make a number of decisions when attempting to study efficiently: they must choose which information to study, for how long to study it, and whether to restudy it later. The current experiments examine whether documented impairments to self-regulated learning when studying information sequentially, as opposed to simultaneously, extend to…

What, exactly, is learned knowledge? And why does it matter in history teaching? Does it matter? Michael Fordham seeks to use the general tenets of cognitive psychology to inform the debate about how history teachers might get the best from their students, in particular in considering the role of memory. Fordham surveys the latest research…

In "Drosophila," prior fighting experience influences the outcome of later contests: losing a fight increases the probability of losing second contests, thereby revealing "loser" effects that involve learning and memory. In these experiments, to generate and quantify the behavioral changes observed as consequences of losing…

Habituation is the simplest form of learning, but we know little about the transcriptional mechanisms that encode long-term habituation memory. A key obstacle is that habituation is relatively stimulus-specific and is thus encoded in small sets of neurons, providing poor signal/noise ratios for transcriptional analysis. To overcome this obstacle,…

Long-term fear memory formation in the hippocampus and neocortex depends upon brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) signaling after acquisition. Incremental, appetitive odor discrimination learning is thought to depend substantially on the differentiation of adult-born neurons within the olfactory bulb (OB)--a process that is closely associated…

The basolateral amygdala (BLA), medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) circuit, plays a crucial role in acquisition and extinction of fear memory. Extinction of aversive memories is mediated, at least in part, by the phosphoinositide-3 kinase (P[subscript 3]K)/Akt pathway in adult rats. There is recent interest in the neural mechanisms that mediate fear…

Underlying the generally oblivious attitude of teachers and learners towards the past is insufficient respect for the role of memory in giving meaning to experience and access to knowledge. We shape our identity by making sense of our past and its relationship to present and future selves, a process that should be intensively cultivated when we…

Despite widespread consensus among educators that "active learning" leads to better outcomes than comparatively passive forms of instruction, it is often unclear why these benefits arise. In this article, we review research showing that the opportunity to control the information experienced while learning leads to improved memory…

A complete understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of learning and memory continues to elude neuroscientists. Although many important discoveries have been made, the question of how memories are encoded and maintained at the molecular level remains. So far, this issue has been framed within the context of one of the most dominant concepts in…

The neuronal systems that promote protective defensive behaviours have been studied extensively using Pavlovian conditioning. In this paradigm, an initially neutral-conditioned stimulus is paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus leading the subjects to display behavioural signs of fear. Decades of research into the neural bases of this…

This study investigated eight prekindergarten teachers' underlying assumptions about how children learn, and how these assumptions were used to inform and enact instruction. By contextualizing teachers' knowledge and understanding as it is used in practice we were able to provide unique insight into the work of teaching. Participants focused on…

Although disrupting reconsolidation is promising in targeting emotional memories, the conditions under which memory becomes labile are still unclear. The current study showed that post-retrieval changes in expectancy as an index for prediction error may serve as a read-out for the underlying processes engaged by memory reactivation. Minor…

Digit comparison is strongly related to individual differences in children's arithmetic ability. Why this is the case, however, remains unclear to date. Therefore, we investigated the relative contribution of three possible cognitive mechanisms in first and second graders' digit comparison performance: digit identification, digit--number word…

Purpose: This study examined the unique and shared variance that nonword repetition and vocabulary knowledge contribute to children's ability to learn new words. Multiple measures of word learning were used to assess recall and recognition of phonological and semantic information. Method: Fifty children, with a mean age of 8 years (range 5-12…