A Right amygdala. C Parahippocampus gyrus
A. Locus ceruleus.
Credit: J. Neuroscience
This blog reports new ideas and work on mind, brain, and behavior - as well as random curious stuff
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Making our Brains Younger - 15 min lecture to senior group, Feb., 2014
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Hello Deric--thanks for your ongoing, interesting posts!
ReplyDeleteAbout the locus coerulus, my understanding of earlier work is that it also participates in a circuit, with the hippocampus, (which inhibits it until novelty is detected), so that it doses the entire cortex with norepinephrine when something new is encountered by the hippocampus, enhancing the probability of learning that new thing and all its associated context for 2 to 10 seconds. I've always that this was the mechanism of "teachable moments" and language learning in infants and young children--and now the importance of emotional activation of learning is underscored by these new results. There is behavioral data (Risley & Hart) that even a small amount (e.g. 8% of communicative interactions) of punitive, negative affect in parental communications is disproportionately connected with slower rates of language learning--presumably the amygdala circuitry is involved here too.
cheers, Robin