Articles: learning-physiology.
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Anaesth Intensive Care · Jan 2011
ReviewImpact of assessments on learning and quality of life during anaesthesia training in Australia and New Zealand.
Assessments are a major factor in the life of anaesthesia trainees, and the impact of assessments on learning is widely acknowledged. Assessment format can have a significant impact on how trainees learn and the extent to which they reach the goals of the curriculum. The assessment format can affect approaches to learning, encouraging surface, deep or strategic learning. ⋯ Specialist examinations are stressful and examination preparation has a major impact on lifestyle, stress and burnout, which have been identified as major concerns in doctors. The additional burden of assessments may contribute. A better understanding of the impact of assessments on both learning and quality of life is required to better inform decisions on future directions in anaesthesia training in Australia and New Zealand.
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Adult primary sensory cortex is not hard wired, but adapts to sensory experience. The cellular basis for cortical plasticity involves a combination of functional and structural changes in cortical neurons and the connections between them. Functional changes such as synaptic strengthening have been the focus of many investigations. ⋯ In this review, the authors focus on structural remodeling that leads to rewiring of cortical circuits. Recent work has identified axonal remodeling, growth of new dendritic spines, and synapse turnover as important structural mechanisms for experience-dependent plasticity in mature cortex. These findings have begun to unravel how rewiring occurs in adult neocortex and offer new insights into the cellular mechanisms for learning and memory.
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Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract · Dec 2009
ReviewTowards effective evaluation and reform in medical education: a cognitive and learning sciences perspective.
Health professions education is dealing with major transformations in light of the changing nature of the health care delivery system, including the use of technology for "just in time" delivery of care, evidence-based practice, personalized medical care and learning, as health professionals strive to integrate biomedical advances and clinical practice. This has forced the medical education community to reassess the current teaching and learning practices and more importantly, the evaluation of the medical education process. There have been recent advances in cognitive and learning sciences theories, some of which can inform medical educators about best teaching and learning practices and their impact on the evaluation process. ⋯ The review begins with an overview of evaluation and assessment in education, followed by an overview of major theories from the cognitive and learning sciences. Next, the role of cognitive and learning sciences theories in informing the process of medical education evaluation is discussed, including its impact on student learning, performance and professional competence, as well as recommendations for reform of medical curricula based on such theories. The paper continues with the elaboration of current trends in health sciences education, particularly medical education, and available evidence for the impact on student learning and performance as well as areas where more research is needed.
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Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci · Nov 2009
ReviewLearning and memory in the aetiopathogenesis of addiction: future implications for therapy?
Addiction is a chronic relapsing disorder. Even after long periods of abstinence from drugs, the risk of relapse, often precipitated by drug-associated cues, remains high. Especially learning processes have been shown to play a major role in the maintenance of addictive behaviour. ⋯ These observations have converged on the hypothesis that addiction represents the pathological usurpation of neural processes that normally serve reward-related learning. In this context, a substantial body of evidence suggests that several types of neuroadaptation occur, including synapse-specific adaptations of the type thought to underlie specific long-term associative memory. Consequently, understanding learning and memory processes in the brain in addiction is an important key for understanding the persistence of addiction, and it is reasonable to hypothesize that the disruption of drug-related memories may help to prevent relapses.
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Classical conditioning of the eye-blink reflex in the rabbit is a form of motor learning that is uniquely dependent on the cerebellum. The cerebellar learning hypothesis proposes that plasticity subserving eye-blink conditioning occurs in the cerebellum. The major evidence for this hypothesis originated from studies based on a telecommunications network metaphor of eye-blink circuits. ⋯ A possible solution to this problem is offered by several promising new approaches that minimize the effects of experimental interventions on spontaneous neuronal activity. Results from these studies indicate that plastic changes underlying eye-blink conditioning are distributed across several cerebellar and extra-cerebellar regions. Specific input interactions that induce these plastic changes as well as their cellular mechanisms remain unresolved.