together in situations in which, for example, a conditioned fear response to

a stimulus leads to emotional arousal and to modulation of declarative

memory for the event.

Cerebral Cortex

Anatomy

The posterior half of the cerebral cortex contains many functionally distinct
areas that are organized into hierarchies of serial and parallel processing for
each sensory modality (see Chapter 2). The anterior cerebral cortex contains
a similar hierarchy of motor areas, as well as association areas in the
prefrontal cortex involved with motor planning, higher order cognition, and
working memory (Fuster, 2001; see Chapter 50). Additionally, information
from different modalities converges on “association” areas in the parietal
and temporal lobes.
Some of the examples provided so far, such as standard eyeblink
classical conditioning, illustrate that some simple forms of learning can
circumvent the cerebral cortex. Nevertheless, for all the memory systems
discussed in this chapter, including the cerebellum, the cerebral cortex
provides important access to incoming information as well as output routes
to influence behavior. Yet plasticity in the cerebral cortex also directly
supports types of memory that do not require components of the other
memory systems. For each area of the cortex, the modification of its
information processing circuitry through alterations in synaptic connectivity
and membrane excitability underlies its direct participation in memory.
These alterations can be dramatic, such as in examples of experience-
dependent reorganization that occurs in perceptual or motor learning, but
can also be more subtle, such as in the phenomenon of repetition priming.

Perceptual and Motor Learning