Practice question · Multiple choice
Lashley trained rats on a maze, then removed varying amounts of cortex from varying locations. Performance declined with the AMOUNT removed and barely depended on WHERE. What does that pattern rule out, and what does it leave open?
Hints
- Amount mattered and location did not. State what each of those two facts excludes.
- Be careful about how far the conclusion generalises beyond a rat running a maze.
Show the answer
A. It rules out one cortical location, leaving a distributed trace open.
Why
Location barely mattering rules out a single site; amount mattering rules out the cortex being irrelevant. What remains is a distributed trace, which fits a task drawing on vision, touch, movement and layout at once. H.M. is why the general version fails, how distributed a memory is depends on what kind of memory it is.
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