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Abstract:
Ramón y Cajal (1909, 1911) was the first to suggest that synapses might be the locations at which memory is laid down in the brain. Some 50 years later, Donald Hebb proposed the physiological condition under which this might happen (Hebb 1949). He invoked the notion of “synaptic plasticity”: Activity occurring simultaneously at the neurons pre- and postsynaptic to a particular synapse would lead to an increase in the efficacy of that synapse. This postulate later became known as the Hebb rule and was widely adopted by both experimentors and theoreticians. Hebb's model of synaptic plasticity provided a natural explanation for many experimental observations on learning, memory, and development.
