Question

What role the hippocampus play in learning and memory? Explain how we know this.

What is LTP? What is necessary to get LTP to happen and why is LTP significant?

Answer 1

Hippocampus is a part of the limbic system and plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory, and in spatial memory that enables navigation. The hippocampus is also important for the formation of new autobiographical and fact memories. It acts as a gateway through which new memories pass before entering permanent memory storage.

We know the importance of hippocampus because Hippocampal damage can result in anterograde amnesia: loss of ability to form new memories, although older memories may be safe. Thus, someone who sustains an injury to the hippocampus may have good memory of his childhood and the years before the injury, but relatively little memory for anything that happened since.

Long-term potentiation is the long-lasting change in the postsynaptic response of a cell that results from previous experience with a high-frequency stimulation. LTP is an example of synaptic plasticity, and is known to be characteristic of cells in the cerebral neocortex and hippocampus.

It is the mechanism by which our memories are created and stored. It allows us to store memories by changing the structure of the synapses (connections between neurons) and remodeling the brain. Increasing LTP mproves learning capabilities and memory.

LTP is significant becausei it is the most important process responsible for synaptic plasticity. LTP inreases the strength of a synapse by increasing its activity for a prolonged period of time. It makes it easier for information to be transferred at the synapse. This is how we store long-term memories. Hence it's important for our LTM.