Theories of associative recall

Abstract

The problem of how the brain stores and retrieves information is ultimately an experimental one, and its solution will doubtless call for the combined resources of psychology, physiology and molecular biology. But it is also a problem of great theoretical sophistication; and one of the major tasks confronting the brain scientist is the construction of theoretical models which are worthy of, and open to, experimental test. In this review we shall be concerned with the latter aspect of the problem of memory, which has attracted quite a lot of attention in the last few years. It is early yet to judge the relative merits of the various models in any detail; but as we shall see, most of those which have been developed beyond their initial hypotheses have a certain family resemblance, and it seems as if we may now be in possession of the basic ideas which will be needed for the understanding of one of the central problems of memory, namely the mechanism of associative recall.