Donald Hebb

Donald Hebb (1904 - 1985) is a psychologist and Canadian neuropsychologist . Its work on the training by networks of artificial neurons had a decisive influence on the cognitive Neurosciences and the Artificial intelligence. They are also one of the sources of the cognitive Révolution with the the United States by providing to the Psychologie an alternative empirically credible to the Béhaviorisme.

Biography

After his childhood passed with Chester in Nova Scotia, Donald Hebb studies with the Université Dalhousie until 1925 then becomes teaching in Quebec. Attracted by psychology, he undertakes in parallel of the higher learning ( graduate studies ) to the Université McGill.

Appreciating only little Pavlovian conditioning , Hebb states to be more attracted by “the Gestalt of Köhler and the criticism of the Réflexologie by Lashley”. It thus leaves to Harvard to write a thesis on the effect of the sensory deprivation during the development on perception of the luminosity in the rat under the direction of Lashley.

In 1936, after its doctorate, it goes back to Quebec to work with Wilder Penfield at the Institute of neurology of Montreal on the effect of the cerebral lesions on the intelligence and the behavior.

In 1942, it turns over near Lashley, but this time at Yerkes Laboratory off Biology Primate to study the emotions in the chimpanzee. It is at that time that it starts to write off The Organization Behavior .

It turns over to McGill as professor of psychology then publishes one of his most influential works, The Organization off Behavior: In Neuropsychological Theory . In this book, it defends a biological design of psychology and affirms that it is neither more nor less than the study of the nervous system. It presents its key ideas on the training and association between the neurons and starts an renewed interest for physiological psychology to it, then on the decline.

It continued then to exert a strong influence by its teaching and its publications (inter alia, Textbook off Psychology ) and will remain in McGill until the end of its career.

In 2001, it is named member of the Temple of the Canadian medical fame.

Training hebbien

One of the most important contributions of Hebb to the neuropsychology is the idea that two neurons activated together reinforce their connection so that activation will be easier in the future.

When year axon off concealment has is near enough to excites B and repeatedly gold persistently takes share in firing it, nap growth process gold metabolic changes takes place in one gold both concealments such that has' S efficiency, ace one off the concealments firing B, is increased ( The Organization off Behavior , p. 62)

It is the synapse of Hebb, the basic mechanism of the training hebbien.

This idea provides a credible material substrate to the phenomena of Apprentissage and opened the way with many empirical research in Neuropsychologie and Artificial intelligence. Actually, the operation of the Nervous system is much more complex and Hebb, which regarded its theories as a simple means of progressing in our comprehension of the human spirit, was fully aware of it. Nevertheless, more than twenty years after, from the researchers in neurosciences will highlight the phenomenon of long-term Potentialization, a biological equivalent of the synapse of Hebb which plays a great part in the neurobiologic theories of the memory.

Another important idea of Hebb is a kind of generalization of the mechanisms of association between neurons. By repeated joint stimulation, a group of neurons could train a “assembly of cells” which would remain activated after the presentation of a stimulus and would thus form a mental Représentation of this stimulus. The thought then becomes activation in sequence of these assemblies of neurons. This theory makes it possible to give an account of nature distributed of the nervous operation which makes that the cognitive capacities can be preserved surprisingly well in the event of cerebral Lésion. It provides also an explanation of the Attention like facilitation of the activation of an assembly of cells by another.

Works

Donald Olding Hebb, The Organization off Behavior: In Neuropsychological Theory , Wiley, New York, 1949.
Donald Olding Hebb in G. Lindzey (to dir.), has off History Psychology in Autobiography vol. VII, W.H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1980.
S. Glickman and Donald Olding Hebb, Returning the Nervous System to Psychology in G. Kimble, C. Boneau, & Mr. Wertheimer (to dir.), Portraits off Pioneers in Psychology , vol. 2, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, 1996.

On Hebb

P. Milner, The Mind and Donald O. Hebb in Scientific American, 268,124-129, 1986.

External bonds

Heritage of Hebb

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