Rogers and Kesner (2013)

Question 1

Rogers and Kesner (2003)

Answer 1

Aim: Determine the role of acetylcholine in memory formation and retrieval

Procedure:
They had 30 rates get adjusted to a maze. Once comfortable, the rats were randomly allocated to either be injected with scopolamine or with a saline solution (placebo). This was done to control for adrenaline release just because of the injection. Then they were put back into the maze and timed.

Results:
Scopolamine group took longer and made more mistakes on the last five trials of Day 1 compared to the first 5 trials. However, it did not appear to affect the retrieval of memories that had already been created on Day 2.

Findings:
Acetylcholine may play an important role in the consolidation of spatial memories, but not in retrieval.

Question 2

Critical thinking 3 pros, 2 cons

Answer 2

• Very controlled environment and a placebo condition to control for extraneous variables increasing internal validity
• Provides insights that could help treatment for Alzheimer’s
• Findings confirmed by Antonovo
• Reductionist approach because memory is a very complex process, composing of multiple chemicals and sub-systems.