Hebb, Donald

Hebb, Donald O. (1949). The Organisation of Behaviour, (p. 62) New York John Wiley Sons. 

The foundations for exploring the molecular and cellular mechanisms of learning and memory were laid in 1949, when Canadian psychologist Donald O. Hebb came up with a simple yet profound idea to explain how memory is represented and stored in the brain. According to Hebb s postulate [6] ... 

The so-called Hebbian learning rule (to honour Canadian neuropsychologist Donald Hebb, who proposed it in 1949) specifies how much the weight of the connection between two neurons should increase or decrease as a function of their activation. The rule states that the weight should increase whether the two interconnected neurons are active simultaneously (otherwise the weight should decrease). This rule is not used too frequently nowadays because it works well provided that all the input patterns are orthogonal or uncorrelated. 

As with so much of psychology, the seed of a modern idea seems to have germinated with Donald Hebb. In his studies of models of animal intelligence,... 

As the noted psychologist Donald Hebb once commented, A good theory is one that holds together long enough to get you to a better theory (1969, p. 27). It is my hope that the schema theory laid out in the following pages will serve in such a manner. 

A suggestion of Donald Hebb, recounted in stairway to the Mind, ibid., p94. (back)... 

The next major development in neural network technology arrived in 1949 with a book. The Organization of Behavior written by Donald Hebb. The book supported and further reinforced McCulloch-Pitts s theory about neurons and how they work. A major point bought forward in the book described how neural pathways are strengthened each time they were used. As we shall see, this is trae of neural networks, specifically in training a network. 

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