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Furthermore, the relationship of the basal ganglia and habit or stimulus/response learning in humans is also shown in a weather forecasting prediction game. In this game, you learn how to predict rain or sunshine using a deck of four cards. Each card “predicts” a certain forecast, and you are supposed to guess what forecast is going to happen based on the card drawn. While this may seem very simple and really, you are just learning associations and learning which weather is associated with which card, patients of Parkinson’s disease (damage to basal ganglia) have a lower percentage of correct answers then those without damage. In comparison to a control group and a group with amnesia, those with Parkinson’s disease scored twenty-five percent lower on average over a span of fifty trails. This disparity clearly shows that the basal ganglia has a relationship with human’s ability of habitual learning and association.

The amygdala is an important structure in the brain for regulating emotional states. The amygdala works with the hippocampus in remembering certain declarative memories more than others. For example, you probably remember exactly what you were doing when you found out that a plane crashed into one of the twin towers in New York on September 11th, 2001. However, you probably don’t remember what you were doing on September 7th, 2001, unless that day has an emotional tie to you as well. How does this work? Essentially, the amygdala facilitates extra enhancements and consolidates these emotional memories to “help” the hippocampus remember said memories better. More specifically, the amygdala has receptors for two chemicals, a neurotransmitter type and a hormonal type, that helps this process happen. During these emotional events, the natural human response is to stress, which in result releases cortisol. Cortisol then binds to glucocorticoid interceptors and then norepinephrine is activated. The basolateral area of the amygdala has receptors for both of these things and eventually these neurons project to the hippocampus. So, when the basolateral amygdala neurons get activated, LTP gets enhanced in the hippocampus. This entire process makes it easier to consolidate the memories! A classic way to show this is through a simple task you can do at home with another person. First, come up with two stories with two scenarios that are similar at the start of the story and at the end of the story. However, for one of the stories make the middle part boring and make another one of the stories emotionally arousing. After telling someone both of the stories, ask them a couple hours later what they remember from either one of the stories. You will more than likely get a response, remembering the emotionally arousal part of the second story. This simple experiment that you can do at home shows how emotion can affect memory! You can thank your amygdala for that.

Differential reinforcement of alternative behaviors is a process used for people with autism or developmental disorders that reward preferred alternative behaviors instead of punishing an exhibited unwanted behavior. This is particularly useful in cases of persistent self-injurious behavior, which is common in autism spectrum disorder. I found this extremely interesting, because as an aspiring applied behavior analyst this technique is often used when seeking behavior reduction in patients. Along with behavior reduction, DRA is an effective technique to combat behaviors such as aggression, tantrumming, and self-stimulatory behaviors. DRA is often combined with extinction, which is essentially the function to eliminate or extinguish a behavior. With both of these combined, the behavior doesn’t stop automatically. This procedure slowly chips away at the undesired behavior by reinforcing the alternative behavior- hence the name. While this may sound a lot like simple ignoring or redirecting, there is a big difference. The function of the problem behavior must be identified along with an alternative behavior to replace it. If it is redirected at random or if the patient is just told to “stop” the chances of the undesired behavior decreasing, is actually not affected. Many of the behaviors that are treated for people on the spectrum are mechanisms used for the patient to combat his or her anxiety or sensory overloads. It is often more harmful to tell said patient to stop without redirecting the behavior to something equally as stimulating or calming. For example, if a child is putting toys or crayons in their mouth to chew on it because it is stimulating and you block this by taking away the objects and putting on a movie, how is this combating their sensory need? Yes, their attention is being directed to something else but more than likely the child still needs something to stimulate his or her mouth. Along with this, when given an alternative behavior it must be paired with reinforcement in order for the patient to prefer this new behavior over the old one. While the old behavior may be inappropriate from the point of view of the parent or the therapist, the child believes it is effective and efficient based on the purpose they want it to do. The reinforcement creates a motivation for the child to engage in the alternative behavior and helps reduce or extinguish the old behavior.