The Object Recognition Task: A New Proposal for the Memory Performance Study

Abstract

1. Introduction In the last few decades, there has been extensive research in the cognitive neurophysiology of learning and memory. Most relevant experimental studies were focused on the possible role of neuropeptides on memory performance and the neurobiological bases of their actions. In general, scientists believe that the answers to those questions relies in understanding how the information about new events is acquired and coded by neurons, how this information is modulated and if it is possible to revert age-related or diseases associated cognitive to failures. Memory is broadly divided into declarative and nondeclarative forms. The formation of declarative memory depends on a neural system anatomically connected in the medial temporal lobe that recruits hippocampus, dentate gyrus, the subicular complex, and the adjacent perirhinal, entorhinal, and parahippocampal cortices) (Squire & Zola-Morgan, 1991; Eichenbaum & Cohen, 2001). In both, animals and humans, declarative memory supports the capacity to recollect facts and events and can be contrasted with a collection of nondeclarative memory abilities: habits and skills, simple forms of conditioning, and other ways that the effects of experience can be expressed through performance rather than recollection