Learning — The Hippocampus

Abstract

Memory and learning are intricately connected. When something is learned it is more or less permanently stored in the brain, from which it can later on be recalled. The movements that are coordinated by the cerebellum are memorized during the learning or rehearsal processes described in the previous chapter. Therefore in the cerebellum the memory resides in the connectivity matrix or, alternatively, in the metric tensor describing these connectivities. The memory of the cerebellum is of the reflexive or procedural type, i.e., it has an automatic quality and neither its information nor its recollection is dependent on awareness, consciousness or other cognitive processes. Usually the learning process for reflexive memory requires many trials, and this type of memory relates to perceptual and motor skills or the learning of procedures and rules. It is therefore also called procedural memory.