With a rising aging population, it is important to develop behavioral tasks that assess and track cognitive decline, and to identify protective factors that promote healthy brain aging. Mnemonic discrimination tasks that rely on pattern separation mechanisms are a promising metric to detect subtle age-related memory impairments. Behavioral…

The aim of this paper is to discuss the interrelationships between the learning of a language, the learning of playing a musical instrument and the learning of movement patterns in order to perform physical exercise. Each area of learning is dealt with separately and in a manner that explains in depth the process of learning. An historical account…

The hippocampus is the primary site of memory and learning in the brain. Both normal aging and various disease pathologies (e.g., alcoholism, schizophrenia, and major depressive disorder) are associated with lower hippocampal volumes in humans and hippocampal atrophy predicts progression of Alzheimers disease. In animals, there is convincing…