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Neuroscience and Neurobiology

Theses and Dissertations

Learning

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Full-Text Articles in Psychology

Individual Differences In Structure Learning, Philip Newlin May 2022

Individual Differences In Structure Learning, Philip Newlin

Theses and Dissertations

Humans have a tendency to impute structure spontaneously even in simple learning tasks, however the way they approach structure learning can vary drastically. The present study sought to determine why individuals learn structure differently. One hypothesized explanation for differences in structure learning is individual differences in cognitive control. Cognitive control allows individuals to maintain representations of a task and may interact with reinforcement learning systems. It was expected that individual differences in propensity to apply cognitive control, which shares component processes with hierarchical reinforcement learning, may explain how individuals learn structure differently in a simple structure learning task. Results showed …


The Role Of Nmda Receptors In Extinction Of Cocaine Self-Administration, Madalyn Hafenbreidel May 2013

The Role Of Nmda Receptors In Extinction Of Cocaine Self-Administration, Madalyn Hafenbreidel

Theses and Dissertations

Relapse is highly prevalent among recovering addicts, and can be triggered by associations made between the rewarding effects of the drug and cues, such as drug paraphernalia or contexts. Inhibiting these associations, through new extinction learning, could help reduce relapse rates. Extinction is formed in phases, like other types of memory. The memory first is acquired in short-term memory, then is consolidated into long-term storage from which it can be retrieved at a later time (Quirk & Mueller, 2008). NMDA receptors are necessary for extinction in other paradigms (Santini, Muller, & Quirk, 2001), and we previously found that blocking NMDA …