The Science of Brain Health and Cognitive Decline | Eric Kandel
- 6 years ago
Kandel's latest book is "Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures" (https://goo.gl/z9xUXK).
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Transcript - There are two major forms of learning: implicit or explicit or declarative and non-declarative. The simple form of learning, which I studied in Aplysia, which holds true for all invertebrate animals, is learning of perceptual and motor skills. More complex learning involves the hippocampus requires conches participation and it involves learning about people, places and objects. So two different systems, implicit learning, which does not involve conscious participation, involves a number of systems in the brain. In the simplest cases just reflects pathways themselves, but in other cases it could involve the amygdala for emotional learning, the basal ganglia for some motor tasks. So these are a variety of systems, but the hippocampus is not in any fundamental way involved. In the learning of people places and objects it involves conscious participation and it involves the hippocampus. The hippocampus is not critical throughout the lifetime of the memory, but it's critical for the initial storing and consolidation of the memory. So these are two very fundamental systems. Mammals have them both, invertebrate animals only have one.
Life long learning is extremely important and the more we learn about life span the more important we realize it is. First of all it's pleasurable. Most people after a while realize when they acquire new knowledge about something that it's really quite an enjoyable experience. But also it's like doing exercise, in fact it's exercise of the brain. It's good for you. So as people age they're susceptible to one of two kinds of cognitive declines. One is Alzheimer's disease, which begins in the 70s but becomes almost an epidemic when people are in their 90s when almost have the populations has Alzheimer's disease. And the other, which was only recently appreciated to be quite distinct from Alzheimer's disease, is called age related memory loss. The difference between Alzheimer's disease in the sense that it starts earlier, it starts in mid life; it involves a different part of the brain it starts in the dentate gyrus, Alzheimer's disease starts in the entorhinal cortex. And it is prevented. You can prevent it. And also to some degree you might be able to reverse it. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/319R5f.
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/eric-kandel-on-memory-loss-lifelong-learning-and-brain-health
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
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Transcript - There are two major forms of learning: implicit or explicit or declarative and non-declarative. The simple form of learning, which I studied in Aplysia, which holds true for all invertebrate animals, is learning of perceptual and motor skills. More complex learning involves the hippocampus requires conches participation and it involves learning about people, places and objects. So two different systems, implicit learning, which does not involve conscious participation, involves a number of systems in the brain. In the simplest cases just reflects pathways themselves, but in other cases it could involve the amygdala for emotional learning, the basal ganglia for some motor tasks. So these are a variety of systems, but the hippocampus is not in any fundamental way involved. In the learning of people places and objects it involves conscious participation and it involves the hippocampus. The hippocampus is not critical throughout the lifetime of the memory, but it's critical for the initial storing and consolidation of the memory. So these are two very fundamental systems. Mammals have them both, invertebrate animals only have one.
Life long learning is extremely important and the more we learn about life span the more important we realize it is. First of all it's pleasurable. Most people after a while realize when they acquire new knowledge about something that it's really quite an enjoyable experience. But also it's like doing exercise, in fact it's exercise of the brain. It's good for you. So as people age they're susceptible to one of two kinds of cognitive declines. One is Alzheimer's disease, which begins in the 70s but becomes almost an epidemic when people are in their 90s when almost have the populations has Alzheimer's disease. And the other, which was only recently appreciated to be quite distinct from Alzheimer's disease, is called age related memory loss. The difference between Alzheimer's disease in the sense that it starts earlier, it starts in mid life; it involves a different part of the brain it starts in the dentate gyrus, Alzheimer's disease starts in the entorhinal cortex. And it is prevented. You can prevent it. And also to some degree you might be able to reverse it. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/319R5f.