"Learning and memory is popping up in all kinds of places, not just psychology, where you expect it, but in cell biology, in physiology, in anatomy, in computation," says neuroscientist Thomas Carew, chairman of psychology at Yale University. "This tremendously important and interesting field is now seen as a legitimate topic for someone in molecular biology. Ten years ago, if someone who's interested in gene expression said, `Let's study learning,' you'd say, `You're on a different wavelength!' But now good molecular biologists, good psychologists, good physiologists all have something to contribute to the issue."
Keeping track of those contributions has its challenges, says Charles Stevens of the Salk Institute in San Diego, a highly cited researcher in the area of long-term potentiation (LTP). "I have to read not only the molecular biology and the electrophysiology literature, but I have to keep up on the psychology literature, too. Everybody who works ...
