He is considered the father of neural network theory, which is central to artificial intelligence research. These networks or "cell assemblies" were connected in ways that control the responses to various stimuli.

It is a model for leaning often called "Hebbian learning." He described his "neuropsychological postulate" as this assumption:

When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A's efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.

Hebb, D. O. (1949). The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory. New York: Wiley and Sons, p.62

This assumption is often paraphrased as "Neurons that fire together wire together."

The Experience Recorder and Reproducer (ERR) model of information philosophy is built on Hebb's assumption as the basis of the Recorder stage, where the Reproducer depends on this extension of Hebb's insight.

Neurons that have been wired together in the past will fire together in the future (reproducing all or part of relevant past experiences).

Our ERR mind model grows out of the biological question of what sort of "mind" would provide the greatest survival value for the lowest (or the first) organisms that evolved mind-like capabilities.

We propose that a minimal primitive mind would need only to "play back" past experiences that resemble any part of current experience. Remembering past experiences has obvious relevance (survival value) for an organism. But beyond survival value, the ERR touches on the philosophical problem of "meaning." We suggest the epistemological "meaning" of information perceived may be found in the past experiences that are reproduced by the ERR.

The ERR model is a memory model for long-term potentiation stored in the neocortical synapses and dendrites. Short-term memory must have a much faster storage mechanism. While long-term storage is slow, we shall see that ERR retrieval is just as fast, and it does not fade as does short-term, working memory. For all we know, traces of all past experiences may be present in a mind. Consider Marcel Proust's Madeleines

We propose that the ERR reproduces the entire complex of the original sensations experienced, together with the emotional response to the original experience (pleasure, pain, fear, etc.). Playback of past experiences may be stimulated by anything in the current experience that resembles something in the past experiences, in the five dimensions of the senses (sound, sight, touch, smell and taste).

The ERR model stands in contrast to the popular cognitive science or “computational” model of a mind as a digital computer with a "central processor" or even many "parallel processors." No algorithms or stored programs are needed for the ERR model. There is nothing comparable to the addresses and data buses used to stored and retrieve information in a digital computer.

The ERR is entirely an analog model of mind.