Antonova (2011)

Uses: neurotransmission / fMRI (imaging techniques) / repeated measures

Aim: To investigate if scopolamine affected hippocampal activity in the creation of spatial memory.

Method: Experiment

The information about the VR game does not need to be detailed, just mention it is a VR game that involves going in a maze and finding a pole in a 3D plane.

PROCEDURE:

  1. Allocate the participants (20 healthy male adults) into two conditions, one injected with placebo and one with scopolamine.

  2. Learn the arena game.

  3. Inject the drug before the study and the participants don't know what they were injected with. Then they proceed to complete the game and their brain activity is measured for six trails.

  4. After 3-4 weeks, the participants will come back and do it again but swapping roles.

RESULTS:

  • The participants injected with scopolamine takes longer to find the pole in the game but the difference was not significant. But their hippocampus does fire less after being injected with scopolamine. It shows acetylcholine plays a key role in the encoding of spatial memories.

CONCLUSIONS:

It shows that acetylcholine is concentrated in the hippocampus. The hippocampus that is filled with acetylcholine is related in the creation of spatial memories. Acetylcholine fires the hippocampus and thus acetylcholine is responsible for spatial memories.

EVALUATION:

  • The experiment is extremely controlled and can not occur in a natural state.

  • Repeated measure is a counter balancing. Repeated measure can be improvement, or getting bored of it. Counter balancing does not fix the problem but simply cancels them out.

  • How would you know the task is measuring spatial memories.

  • Indirect evidence

  • Reductionist and assumptions

Antonova, E., Parslow, D., Brammer, M., Simmons, A., Williams, S., Dawson, G. R., & Morris, R. (2011). Scopolamine disrupts hippocampal activity during allocentric spatial memory in humans: an fMRI study using a virtual reality analogue of the Morris Water Maze. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 25(9), 1256-1265. doi:10.1177/0269881110379285