A taste for learning

Understanding mechanisms of learning and memory storage in the human brain will contribute to designing strategies for optimizing this functionality in both biological and electronic neural networks. Studies of memory-deficient patients have localized some of the critical brain areas for memory storage and established that different types of information can be stored in anatomically separate locations. Studies of cellular and biochemical events during associative learning in several molluscan neural networks have produced detailed hypotheses about the causative events leading to changes in synaptic function during learning. Use of recently developed preparations of mammalian CNS should allow direct tests of the generality of the molluscan mechanisms for synaptic plasticity during learning in the mammalian brain.