Karl Lashley
(1890-1958)
Karl Lashley was a behaviorist psychologist with theories about
memory and learning.
He received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1911, studying under the great behaviorist
John Watson. He then became a professor at University of Minnesota, University of Chicago, and Harvard. He left Harvard to become the director of the Yerkes Laboratory of Primate Biology in Orange Park, Florida.
Lashley lesioned parts of the brains in lab rats to see what brain function is lost. He theorized that specific information would be stored in what he called "ngrams." Since the rats could still run quickly through the maze that they had learned, so concluded (mistakenly) that those ngrams are not located in specific parts of the brain, but must be distributed widely in the neocortex. He called this "equipotentiality" and claimed that any part of the brain could perform any brain function.
In 1934
Donald O. Hebb moved to the University of Chicago to study with Karl Lashley. In 1942, Hebb moved to Orange Park, Florida to once again work with Lashley at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center.
The Brain is not a Computer
At the very beginning of the digital age, in 1951, Lashley argued against the use of any machine-based metaphor.
“Descartes was impressed by the hydraulic figures in the royal gardens, and developed a hydraulic theory of the action of the brain,” Lashley wrote. “We have since had telephone theories, electrical field theories and now theories based on computing machines and automatic rudders. I suggest we are more likely to find out about how the brain works by studying the brain itself, and the phenomena of behaviour, than by indulging in far-fetched physical analogies.”
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