What is "mechanisms"

Usage examples of "mechanisms".

As neuropsychologists have striven to provide some coherent explanation of these effects in terms of brain structures and pathways, there have been attempts in the last few years to mimic the specific types of brain damage in humans by experimental studies with monkeys - experiments which have yielded valuable information about mechanisms and brain structures but have run into profound ethical conflicts about the legitimacy of deliberately damaging monkey brains in order to learn more about human brain processes.

But after more than a decade of neglect the wheel comes full circle, for it turns out that certain phosphoproteins are centrally involved in memory mechanisms, and today my lab is using the modern variants of the methods I learned with McIlwain nearly thirty years ago.

For instance, by asking patients first to repeat back immediately a short sequence of digits, then to remember a list of items presented a few minutes previously, and finally to describe some past experience, such as what they did last summer, it is possible to identify different classes of deficits in memory mechanisms, often associated with ageing- and in particular with specific diseases of ageing.

But, equally, the insistence on treating the brain as a sort of black box whose internal biological mechanisms and processes are irrelevant, and all that matters is to match inputs to outputs, is reminiscent of the behaviourist programme in psychology, about which there will be much more to say in Chapter 6.

My research is aimed at understanding the basic brain mechanisms involved in learning and memory.

The basic biochemical mechanisms by which we tick are very similar in most other organisms.

I found myself learning about their circulatory and respiratory mechanisms, even about their brains.

I am talking about mechanisms of retention and transmission - the sharing and collectivization of memories.

Do we have here to deal simply with puns - the use of words originating in one context in another, different one - or does the fact that many different scientific discourses use the term cast some light on the mechanisms and processes that may be involved?

But short of ways of actually looking inside the brain during learning and memory formation, there are strict limits to what could be learned about the brain mechanisms of memory by such experiments and observations in normal adults.

Nor can studies of increased glucose or oxygen use by themselves tell one about the detailed molecular mechanisms of what is going on.

To unravel the dialectic between specificity and plasticity and to understand its mechanisms form some of the major tasks of modern biology.

So it turns out that to understand the mechanisms of memory, of plasticity, it is also necessary to understand the mechanisms of specificity.

Nonetheless, if in behavioural terms memory is a special case of experience, it is at least worth considering the possibility that the brain mechanisms of memory may be special cases of neural plasticity.

To understand such mechanisms it is not adequate to reduce them to linear sequences of stimulus-response, positive and negative reinforcement.