Animal Models of Learning and Memory

One goal of behavioral neuroscience is to illuminate the neural underpinnings of basic learning and memory as captured in a set of reliable behavioral phenomena. A number of associative models of learning have been proposed to account for these phenomena at an elementary cognitive (i.e., associative) level and to organize these phenomena into a set of fundamental processes that demand a neural basis. This article describes critical behavioral phenomena and organizes them according to similarities in procedure and consequent behavior. These phenomena are then used as benchmarks for the most widely referenced contemporary associative models of learning.