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context analogous to the human perception of
context within the model is the big challenge. In
behavioural studies of context, the strongest cues are
often emotional ones such as fear (e.g. Rudy,
Barrientos & O’Reilly, 2002), and how to replicate
that neurobiological effect in the computational
models is not clear.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The Serial Position Effect has historically been
explained using a two-store memory model. Primacy
and recency were thought to be the work of long
term memory and working (short term) memory,
respectively. This paper has used simulation to
explore the theory that a one-store model of memory
can account fully for SPE. Simulation results
demonstrate that both primacy and recency of the
SPE in a serial recall task can be replicated using
only the hippocampus simulation, a result suggesting
that a one-store model of memory for this recall task
is sufficient.
While we deliberately restricted this work to the
hippocampus-only simulation in order to test the
one-store memory model of the SPE, future
computational simulations for the SPE should be
expanded to use the prefrontal cortex/hippocampus
combined simulation. As outlined in Atallah, Frank,
and O’Reilly (2004), memory encoding is
distributed, and memories are not “located” in either
the hippocampus or the cortex, but in both. A
connected PFC-hippocampus simulation would
allow this distributed model of memory to be more
thoroughly tested. The fact that the Serial Position
Effect is so thoroughly studied in experimental
psychology suggests that further investigation along
these lines will improve our understanding of the
biological mechanisms of memory.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The work presented in this paper was funded in part
by the ATLAS Institute at the University of
Colorado Boulder. The authors would like to thank
Randall O’Reilly, Laura Michaelson, and Seth Herd
for their assistance in using Emergent, as well as in
developing this project.
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