Understanding the Neuroscience of Learning and Memory with Simon Gadbois, PhD

This webinar session was broadcast as part of the Brain Train event – November 2025

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Webinar Description

Neuroscience has historically linked together the study of learning and memory. Learning is about acquisition, but the study of memory adds two sub-processes to the learning process: The storage of what has been learned, and the retrieval of what has been learned. Behind this perspective, hides a rich conceptualization of what learning is, and what “remembering” and “forgetting” are about in the field of training.

We will discuss the important literature of “working memory” in animals, and how it connects to attention. We will also discuss the conscious and unconscious processes in learning and memory (latent learning, latent inhibition, implicit and explicit memory, etc.) and how this perspective broadens how we think about both classical and operant conditioning.

Most of these terms (that we have all heard at some point or another when discussing “learning” or “conditioning”) are couched in the structure and dynamic processes of the brain. In other words, there are brain substrates specialized in these learning, storage, and retrieval processes. We will conclude that from the perspective of neuroscience, learning (acquisition of new behaviors and of information, and modification of behaviors) is not distinct from the mechanisms allowing for the storage and (conscious or unconscious) retrieval of what was learned.