Developments of a water-maze procedure for studying spatial learning in the rat

Does the autistic child have a theory of mind

Abstract We use a new model of metarepresentational development to predict a cognitive deficit which could explain a crucial component of the social impairment in childhood autism. One of the manifestations of a basic metarepresentational capacity is a ‘theory of mind’. We have reason to believe that autistic children lack such a ‘theory’. If this were so, then they would be unable to impute beliefs to others and to predict their behaviour. This hypothesis was tested using Wimmer and Perner's puppet play paradigm. Normal children and those with Down's syndrome were used as controls for a group of autistic children. Even though the mental age of the autistic children was higher than that of the controls, they alone failed to impute beliefs to others. Thus the dysfunction we have postulated and demonstrated is independent of mental retardation and specific to autism.

Does the Autistic Child Have a''Theory of Mind''? Cognition

This article considers the role of the hippocampus in memory function. A central thesis is that work with rats, monkeys, and humans--which has sometimes seemed to proceed independently in 3 separate literatures--is now largely in agreement about the function of the hippocampus and related structures. A biological perspective is presented, which proposes multiple memory systems with different functions and distinct anatomical organizations. The hippocampus (together with anatomically related structures) is essential for a specific kind of memory, here termed declarative memory (similar terms include explicit and relational). Declarative memory is contrasted with a heterogeneous collection of nondeclarative (implicit) memory abilities that do not require the hippocampus (skills and habits, simple conditioning, and the phenomenon of priming). The hippocampus is needed temporarily to bind together distributed sites in neocortex that together represent a whole memory.

Memory and the hippocampus: A synthesis from findings with rats, monkeys, and humans.

Damage to the hippocampal system disrupts recent memory but leaves remote memory intact. The account presented here suggests that memories are first stored via synaptic changes in the hippocampal system, that these changes support reinstatement of recent memories in the neocortex, that neocortical synapses change a little on each reinstatement, and that remote memory is based on accumulated neocortical changes. Models that learn via changes to connections help explain this organization. These models discover the structure in ensembles of items if learning of each item is gradual and interleaved with learning about other items. This suggests that the neocortex learns slowly to discover the structure in ensembles of experiences. The hippocampal system permits rapid learning of new items without disrupting this structure, and reinstatement of new memories interleaves them with others to integrate them into structured neocortical memory systems.

Why there are complementary learning systems in the hippocampus and neocortex: insights from the successes and failures of connectionist models of learning and memory.

It is proposed that the hippocampal formation makes a unique contribution to memory by providing the neural basis for the initial acquisition and storage of configural associations among events. A distinction is made between two kinds of memory processes: a simple associative process, which does not depend on the hippocampal formation, and a configural associative process, which does. The simple associative system records the organism’s experiences as changes in the strength of associations between elementary stimulus events. The configural associative system combines the representations of elementary stimulus events to construct unique representations and allows for the formation of associations between these configural representations and other elementary representations. In the present paper, the results of two experiments designed to test predictions of our theory are described. We then illustrate how the theory can be applied to explain a wide range of impairments that have been observed when learning and memory tasks have been employed to assess the effect of hippocampal formation damage. These include tasks that measure place learning, recognition memory, latent inhibition, serial-compound conditioning, discrimination-reversal learning, and stimulus-selection processes. The relationship of our position to some other views of hippocampal function is discussed, and we conclude with suggestions for future research.

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Configural association theory: The role of the hippocampal formation in learning, memory, and amnesia.

A murine monoclonal antibody (OKT9) raised against human leukemic cells binds to a wide variety of leukemia and tumor cell lines and to a minority of leukemia cells taken directly from patients Fetal thymus and liver are strongly reactive as are some normal, immature hemopoietic cells and activated lymphocytes Reactivity with OKT9 appears to correlate with proliferation status in both normal and malignant populations Biochemical analysis indicates that this structure is a approximately equal to 180,000-dalton glycoprotein with two disulfide-bonded subunits of approximately equal to 90,000-daltons Isolation of the transferrin receptor from a T-cell line (MOLT-4) indicates that it also has a dimeric approximately equal to 180,000-dalton structure Radio-labeled transferrin bound to its receptors can be specifically precipitated by the monoclonal OKT9, although the latter does not bind transferrin itself, indicating that the antigenic structure defined by this antibody is likely to be the transferrin receptor

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/78/7/4515.full.pdf

Robert J. Sutherland

Papers

Configural association theory: The role of the hippocampal formation in learning, memory, and amnesia.

Ubiquitous cell-surface glycoprotein on tumor cells is proliferation-associated receptor for transferrin.

A behavioural analysis of spatial localization following electrolytic, kainate- or colchicine-induced damage to the hippocampal formation in the rat ☆

Spatial mapping: definitive disruption by hippocampal or medial frontal cortical damage in the rat

A characterization of performance by men and women in a virtual Morris water task:: A large and reliable sex difference