Erasing the engram: the unlearning of procedural skills.

ABSTRACT: Huge amounts of money are spent every year on unlearning programs--in drug-treatment facilities, prisons, psychotherapy clinics, and schools. Yet almost all of these programs fail, since recidivism rates are high in each of these fields. Progress on this problem requires a better understanding of the mechanisms that make unlearning so difficult. Much cognitive neuroscience evidence suggests that an important component of these mechanisms also dictates success on categorization tasks that recruit procedural learning and depend on synaptic plasticity within the striatum. A biologically detailed computational model of this striatal-dependent learning is described (based on Ashby & Crossley, 2011). The model assumes that a key component of striatal-dependent learning is provided by interneuron

SUBMITTER: Crossley MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3543754 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature