Key Study - Rosenzweig and Bennet 1972

Aim:

• Redistribution of grey matter in the hippocampus itself can be explained by attributing different functions to the two regions: it is now accepted that the posterior hippocampus is involved when previously learned spatial information is used, whereas the anterior hippocampus is responsible for learning new spatial information.

Method:

• The researchers placed rats into one or two environments to measure the effect of either enrichment or deprivation on the development of neurons in the cerebral cortex.
• The enriched, stimulating environment was characterised by interesting toys to play with.
• The deprived environment was characterised by no toys.

Results:

• Post-mortem studies of their brains showed that those that had been in the stimulating environment had an increased thickness in the cortex.…