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How to build a brain: Multiple memory systems have evolved and only some of them are constructivist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1997

James E. Black
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, The Beckman Institute, and the Neuroscience Program; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801
William T. Greenough
Affiliation:
The Beckman Institute, and the Neuroscience Program; Departments of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Cell & Structural Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801 [email protected] soma.npa.uiuc.edu/labs/greenough/home.html

Abstract

Much of our work with enriched experience and training in animals supports the Quartz & Sejnowski (Q&S) thesis that environmental information can interact with pre-existing neural structures to produce new synapses and neural structure. However, substantial data as well as an evolutionary perspective indicate that multiple information-capture systems exist: some are constructivist, some are selectionist, and some may be tightly constrained.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
© 1997 Cambridge University Press

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