Human neo-cortex can be viewed as a modality invariant system for pattern discovery and associative learning. Similarly, research in the field of distributional learning suggests that much of human language acquisition can be explained by generic statistical learning mechanisms. The current paper argues that pattern processing capabilities of the human brain can be better understood if the proc...

During learning, neural responses decrease over repeated exposure to identical stimuli. This repetition suppression is thought to reflect a progressive optimization of neuronal responses elicited by the task. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to study the neural basis of associative learning of visual objects and their locations. As expected, activation in specialized cortical area...

Throughout the animal kingdom, the inhibitory neurotransmitter γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a key modulator of physiological processes including learning. With respect to associative learning, the exact time in which GABA interferes with the molecular events of learning has not yet been clearly defined. To address this issue, we used two different approaches to activate GABA receptors during a...

Motor representations in the human mirror neuron system are tuned to respond to specific observed actions. This ability is widely believed to be influenced by genetic factors, but no study has reported a genetic variant affecting this system so far. One possibility is that genetic variants might interact with visuomotor associative learning to configure the system to respond to novel observed a...

OBJECTIVE Suboptimal functioning of the basal ganglia is implicated in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These structures are important to the acquisition of associative knowledge, leading some to theorize that associative learning deficits might be expected, despite the fact that most extant research in ADHD has focused on effortful control. We present 2 studies that examined th...

The way in which vectors distribute themselves amongst their hosts has important epidemiological consequences. While the role played by active host choice is largely unquestioned, current knowledge relates mostly to the innate response of vectors towards stimuli signalling the presence or quality of their hosts. Many of those cues, however, can be unpredictable, and therefore prevent the incorp...

Associative learning plays an important role in the development of anxiety disorders, but a thorough understanding of the variables that impact such learning is still lacking. We investigated whether individual differences in autobiographical memory specificity are related to discrimination learning and generalization. In an associative learning task, participants learned the association betwee...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Modern learning theories suggest that particularly strong associative learning contributes to the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders, thus explaining why some individuals develop an anxiety disorder after a frightening (conditioning) event, whereas others do not. However, associative learning has rarely been investigated experimentally in specific phobias. T...

Feedback-based associative learning (e.g., acquiring new associations from positive or negative outcomes) and generalization (e.g., applying past learning to new settings) are important cognitive skills that enable people to make economic decisions or social judgments. This ability to acquire new skills based on feedback and transfer those experiences to predict positive outcomes in novel situa...

Recent proposals have conceptualized piriform cortex as an association cortex, capable of integrating incoming olfactory information with descending input from higher order associative regions such as orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). If true, encoding in piriform cortex should reflect associative features prominent in these areas during associative learning involving olfactory cues. To test this hyp...