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For centuries, scientists have been arguing about where memory resides in the brain. I explore the fascinating history of this quest to characterize the machinery of memory in my latest book, The Idea of the Brain.
Our modern understanding of the nature of memory can be traced back to the 1940s. The Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb argued that “memory must be structural,” and based on networks of cells. These networks, Hebb claimed, became better connected with repeated experience—the presentation of food after the sound of a bell, for example. This idea is often summarized as “cells that fire together wire together.”
At around the same time, McGill University neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield showed that it was possible to evoke very precise, eerie memories by stimulating a particular part of the human brain. Often Penfield’s patients heard sounds—a piano being played, someone singing a well-known song, or a telephone ...
