Summer SAVY, Session 3 Day 4, “Neurobiology of Learning and Memory” (7th-8th)
We started the day with our students’ group presentations on Alzheimer’s disease and two amnesic patient studies! A special highlight in today’s presentations was the thoughtful, deep questions students asked (more details coming up right away!).
The first group introduced the definition, causes, and symptoms of Alzheimer’s. A video shared by this group was very moving – about a lady with Alzheimer’s and how she was supported emotionally and functionally by her loving family. After this presentation, our students asked about specific types of the disease and possible treatment. The group was also asked how they felt about research after working on this project. The group members expressed their increased appreciation of the value of science and research, and many students also agreed that becoming a scientist can directly help patients. We also tied it in with the idea from the first day – when people are excelling in this society, it is actually helping everyone because we can get to solutions faster.
Students in charge of the second presentation shared the current treatment of Alzheimer’s and how researchers may go about finding new solutions. Our presenters were then asked about specific terms in their presentation, such as “DMT”. The group’s responses helped students better understand those concepts. We also thought about other ways to help patients besides research. For example, people who are talented at and enjoy taking care of others can support patients. In addition, we went back to the idea that we all have different interests and talents and asked the question “What if a person becomes a pop singer or an architect, but not a researcher, does it mean they can’t help these patients?” It motivated us to think about the many things going on behind research. For example, we discussed that research needs funding, which comes from donations, foundations, and the government. Further, government funding comes from taxpayers who have all kinds of occupations. We concluded that if we try to become the best of ourselves, we are always helping each other, regardless of our occupations.
The next group of students presented a famous amnesic patient (a person who loses their memory and/ or can’t form new memory) – Patient HM. It was a very comprehensive presentation that included: an explanation of how the patient became amnesic – which was through a stroke, background information about a stroke can affect the brain, how the patient was very noble to be willing to cooperate with the scientists (even though he never remembered who the scientists were), his legacy, and a source page showing that this information comes from highly credible sources. We followed up the presentation with some questions that helped us understand better the concepts learned in the past few days. For example, why was H.M. able to trace stars in a mirror but did not remember doing it? Our students gave very good answers using knowledge from this week’s learning – tracing stars can be a muscle or implicit memory, while not being able to remember the event involves episodic memory.
Last, but not least, we heard a presentation about another amnesic patient – Clive Wearing. The group did a very good job uncovering the beginning of Clive’s story (contracting herpes and developing encephalitis), as well as showing a very moving video about how Clive forgets everything in 7 – 30 seconds but always remembers his wife and how to play the piano. We concluded that Clive’s feelings for his wife represented an emotional memory, and playing the piano, a muscle memory. Both memories represent implicit memory, which is different from episodic memory.
The next important topic we went into was metacognition. We began by asking ourselves, “What is learning/thinking?” and shared some examples. Then we discovered that many, if not all, our examples are at the “object” level. In other words, it’s a more primitive learning, involving the creation of an association between a reaction in us and an object (stimulus) in the environment. For example, a student sees a red signal and stops walking. Even animals are capable of such learning. We watched pigeons playing ping pong and da og doing math. Then, we were ushered into the concept of metacognition – a higher level of learning. That is, thinking about how we are doing in school/any cognitive activities, and how we can help ourselves learn better. It’s thinking about thinking. We have to understand metacognition better by first monitoring our mind through various activities, for example, we first look at a question: What is the capital of Australia? a. Melbourne, b. Brisbane, c. Canberra. Then we came up with an answer, but we also needed to say how sure we were on a scale of 1 to 5. In this way, we monitored how we were doing and decided when we needed help or how to allocate study time. We then did an activity where we asked ourselves metacognitive questions like “What am I especially good at in learning?” and “Do I know any strategies that can help me learn better?”. We then moved on to learn about more strategies such as categorization, elaboration, and imagery. We wrapped up the metacognition topic with an activity about emotions in learning. Specifically, we reflected on the various emotions we may experience during learning and regulation strategies.
We had a taste of a fascinating topic afterwards – sensation and perception. We realized that what we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel is actually electrical and chemical signals in our nervous system. This perspective really challenged our understanding of reality. What is real? Is there anything that can be called reality if all our perceptions are electrical signals in the nervous system? We looked at many examples to help us appreciate this idea. For example, the different colors we see are only the different wavelengths that interact with our nervous system. We looked at the famous “dress”, which was perceived as black/blue by some and white/gold by others.
The day ended with students beginning to work on their final projects in a computer lab. We will come back tomorrow to resume the work on the final project, and we will also have more interesting new topics to learn about!
