Cognition DISCUSSION 3
Experience-Dependent Plasticity
Learning objectives: By the end of this presentation you will be able to…
define experience-dependent plasticity and describe how it illustrates the influence of experience on bottom-up processing.
describe classic studies of experience-dependent plasticity
Experience-Dependent Plasticity
I. Overview
last time we discussed processes of object perception and learned that experience plays a role in top-down processing (likelihood from experience, rules of form from environmental regularities)
Today we will briefly consider two studies, which show that experience influences bottom-up processing of sensory information.
studies concern experience-dependent plasticity- a change in brain structure as the result of experience
Experience-Dependent Plasticity
I. Overview
II. The Research
A. Blakemoore & Cooper (1970) “kittens in tubes”
To summarize…
reared 3wk-3month old kittens in environments with either horizontal or vertical lines.
kittens failed to respond to stimuli that did not match their rearing environment.
visual cortex of kittens lacked feature detectors tuned to stimuli that did not match their rearing environment.
exposure to normal visual environment within the sensitive period restored vision.
Experience-Dependent Plasticity
I. Overview
II. The Research
A. Blakemoore & Cooper (1970) kittens in tubes study
B. Gauthier et al.’s (1999) Greebles study
measured activity of neurons in FFA, known to respond to faces.
created experts by exgtensively training participants in “Greeble recognition” over a 4-day period…
measured activity of FFA cells again…
that training increased responding to greebles to the same level at which they respond to faces suggests experience plays a role in tuning cells in FFA.