The Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
Sinauer Associates, 2008 380 pp, hardcover, $74.95 0878936696 | ISBN: 0-878-93669-6
Many of the concepts and methodologies that dominate contemporary studies of learning and memory were developed around the turn of the twentieth century. It was in this 'golden age' that German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus developed the first empirical approaches for studying human memory, and, around the same time, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov and the American psychologist Edward Thorndike developed the behavioral frameworks for studying these processes in nonhuman experimental subjects. In bringing scientific rigor to the study of learning and memory, Ebbinghaus, Thorndike, Pavlov and others provided the impetus for twentieth and twenty-first century scientists to begin to look inside the 'black box' of learning and memory and to ultimately develop neurobiological accounts of these processes. In his new book, The Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, Jerry Rudy takes us on a journey from the work of these pioneers to contemporary neurobiological studies where, armed with a plethora of imaging and molecular tools, today's neurobiologists are getting unprecedented views inside of this black box. The challenge for this book, and for the field in general, is to bring together such diverse observations into coherent models of how experience modifies the brain.
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