Learning and memory

Abstract

Memory is one of the most fundamental mental processes. Neuroscientists study this process by using extremely diverse strategies. Two different approaches aimed at understanding learning and memory were introduced in this symposium. The first focuses on the roles played by synaptic plasticity, especially in long-term depression in the cerebellum in motor learning, and its regulatory mechanism. The second approach uses an elegant chick-quail transplantation system on defined brain regions to study how neural populations interact in development to form behaviorally important neural circuits and to elucidate neurobiological correlates of perceptual and motor predispositions.

Figure 1

Sound production (Left), schematic of transplant (Center), and vertical component of head movement (Right) in quail-chick chimeras. Transplants are shown on a schematic drawing of a 45-hr embryo neural tube. C-C chimera refers to control transplants between two different chicken embryos. See ref. for further details.