Committed to memory

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 6

Committed to memory 

1: What does the writer mean by 'that kind of emotionally charged response'? (lines 9-10)

2: Why do Scott Fraser and his colleagues study the zebra fish's pallium?

3: What did they do to the fish? (lines 78-89)

4: What can be concluded about this experiment and the 'previous studies' mentioned in line 96, according to Tomás Ryan?

5: What did you know more after reading this article?

Answer question 1

The ‘emotionally charged response’ refers to the fear you might experience whenever you go near a bowl of cereal because your brain remembers that one time long ago a big spider dropped into your bowl of cereal. The ‘response’ is the way your brain reacts to something which it has learned to fear, and because you once had a spider drop in your cereal, your brain now associates cereal with spiders and immediately sends out a warning the moment you see cereal. 

Answer question 2

Scott Fraser and his colleagues study the zebra fish’s pallium because it resembles the human amygdala, the centre in the brain where emotions like fear and anger are regulated. The pallium is easier to study than the amygdala because it is more easily accessible: while the amygdala is hidden deep inside the brains, the pallium is on the surface because the zebra fish sort of pops its brains inside out like a popcorn kernel. In addition, young zebra fish are transparent, so that makes it easier to look inside the fish without having to cut it open. 

Answer question 3

They wanted to teach fish to be scared of light, because they wanted to see how a fish stored traumatic experiences. They wanted to be able to look in its brain to see what happened to the synapses when it experienced fear. 

Answer question 4

In the previous studies researchers suggested that ‘memories can form through the addition and deletion of synapses’. That is exactly what happened in Fraser’s study, so it seems that these previous studies were indeed correct. 

Answer question 5

miscellaneous answers