Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T19:58:24.506Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Thirty-Sixth Maudsley Lecture: Memory Mechanisms of the Brain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

J. Z. Young
J. Z. Young*
Affiliation:
Department of Anatomy, University College, London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The invitation to give a commemorative lecture of such importance evokes feelings of gratitude and pleasure that a body as distinguished as your own should show interest in the work of one's collaborators. This is especially so for us because the field in which we work might seem, to superficial observation, to be remote from practical interests. It has long been our hope that by study of a relatively simple animal we might be able to discover some of the fundamental features of living memory systems, which have not yielded to investigation in mammals or man. Your interest encourages us to think that we may be on the right lines and I hope that in return it may be possible to tell you at least something of the principles that underlie the coding and storing of information in the nervous system. But the brain is a very complicated instrument and the problem is far from solution. The account that I shall give will be grossly over-simplified and will probably seem to present an absurdly static picture of what we all know to be a continually active and dynamic system.

Type
The Thirty-Sixth Maudsley Lecture
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 108 , Issue 453 , March 1962 , pp. 119 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1962 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Boycott, B. B., and Young, J. Z., “A memory system in Octopus vulgaris Lamarck” Proc. Roy. Soc. B, 1955, 143, 449–480.Google Scholar
Eccles, J. C., “The nature of inhibition”, Proc. roy. Soc. B., 1961, 153, 445–476.Google Scholar
Hebb, D. O., The Organization of Behaviour, 1949. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Hubel, D. H., and Wiesel, T. N., “Receptive fields of single neurones in the cats's striate cortex”, J. physiol., 1959, 148, 574–596.Google Scholar
Iidem , “Single unit activity in lateral geniculate body and optic tract of unrestrained cats, J. physiol., 1960, 150, 91–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuffler, S., “Synaptic inhibitory mechanisms. Properties of dendrites and problems of excitation in isolated sensory nerve cells. Exp. Cell. Res. Suppl. 5, 1958, 493–519.Google Scholar
Maturana, H. R., Lettvin, J. Y., McCulloch, W. S., and Pitts, W. H., “Anatomy and physiology of vision in the frog” (Rana pipiens), J. gen. physiol., 1960, 43, 129–175.Google Scholar
Muntz, W. R. A., “Interocular transfer in Octopus vulgaris“, J. comp. physiol. Psychol., 1962. (In press.)Google Scholar
Neumann, V., “The computor and the brain, 1958. New Haven.Google Scholar
Sutherland, N. S., “The visual system of Octopus. (3) Theories of shape discrimination in Octopus”, Nature, Lond., 1960, 186, 840–844.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teuber, H. L., and Rudel, R. G. [not yet published].Google Scholar
Wells, M. J., “Propricoception and visual discrimination of orientation in Octopus“, J. exp. Biol., 1960, 37, 489–499.Google Scholar
Young, J. Z., “The visual system of Octopus. (1) Regularities in the retina and optic lobes of Octopus in relation to form discrimination”, Nature, Lond., 1960, 186, 836–839.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.