When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A's efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.
Psychologists
Donald O. Hebb
Canadian psychologist and the founder of neuropsychology (1904-1985). His 1949 book The Organization of Behavior proposed what is now called Hebbian learning — neurons that fire together wire together — opening the way to model cognition through brain function and providing the theoretical core of modern artificial neural networks. He spent most of his career at McGill University in Montreal, where his 1953-54 sensory deprivation research was later found to have been linked to CIA interrogation efforts. He served as president of both the Canadian and American Psychological Associations and trained much of the next generation of cognitive neuroscience, including Brenda Milner.
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Donald O. Hebb's Other Quotes
It is not possible to predict from a knowledge of the strength of a man's drives or from the level of his anxiety what he will do.
The work that we have done at McGill University began, actually, with the problem of brainwashing. We were not permitted to say so in the first publishing.
The brain functions on its own; we know that without sensory input it produces something which we call dreams or hallucinations.
Motivation cannot be taught directly. One can only create the conditions under which it will arise.
Related Quotes
Behavior as we shall observe it always seems to have the character of getting-to or getting-from a specific goal-object, or goal-situation.
-- Edward C. Tolman
Behavior is shaped largely by the exigencies of a given situation, and the notion that individuals act in consistent ways across different situations, reflecting the influence of underlying personality traits, is a myth.
-- Walter Mischel
Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently.
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The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the person to try to reduce the dissonance and achieve consonance.
-- Leon Festinger
Social categorization can be considered as a process of bringing together social objects or events in groups which are equivalent with regard to an individual's actions, intentions and system of beliefs.
-- Henri Tajfel