Abstract
To explore the relationship between category and perceptual learning, we examined both category and perceptual learning in patients with treated Wilson's disease (WD), whose basal ganglia, known to be important in category learning, were damaged by the disease. We measured their learning rate and accuracy in rule-based and information-integration category learning, and magnitudes of perceptual learning in a wide range of external noise conditions, and compared the results with those of normal controls. The WD subjects exhibited deficits in both forms of category learning and in perceptual learning in high external noise. However, their perceptual learning in low external noise was relatively spared. There was no significant correlation between the two forms of category learning, nor between perceptual learning in low external noise and either form of category learning. Perceptual learning in high external noise was, however, significantly correlated with information-integration but not with rule-based category learning. The results suggest that there may be a strong link between information-integration category learning and perceptual learning in high external noise. Damage to brain structures that are important for information-integration category learning may lead to poor perceptual learning in high external noise, yet spare perceptual learning in low external noise. Perceptual learning in high and low external noise conditions may involve separate neural substrates.
Highlights
In category learning, observers improve their performance in classifying novel stimuli into discrete categories through trial-anderror with feedback [1,2,3,4]
Converging evidence from cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and brain imaging suggests that category learning may be mediated by two separate brain systems [16,17,18,19,20,21,22]: Rule-based category learning is mediated by frontal brain areas such as the anterior cingulate, prefrontal cortex (PFC), and by the head of the caudate nucleus in the basal ganglia
We evaluated rule-based and informationintegration category learning and perceptual learning in both low and high external noise environments in subjects with treated Wilson’s disease and normal controls
Summary
Observers improve their performance in classifying novel stimuli into discrete categories through trial-anderror with feedback [1,2,3,4]. Observers improve their discrimination or detection performance in perceptual tasks through repeated practice or training [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. Converging evidence from cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and brain imaging suggests that category learning may be mediated by two separate brain systems [16,17,18,19,20,21,22]: Rule-based category learning is mediated by frontal brain areas such as the anterior cingulate, prefrontal cortex (PFC), and by the head of the caudate nucleus in the basal ganglia. Informationintegration category learning is mediated by the tail of the caudate nucleus in the basal ganglia and a dopamine-mediated reward signal. Existing evidence suggests that the declarative memory systems and especially working memory play major roles in rulebased category learning, whereas the non-declarative memory systems and especially procedural memory are heavily involved in information-integration category learning [23,24]
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