ABSTRACT
The research area of sensory deprivation owes a peculiar debt to the Chinese "brainwashers" of the Korean War. The Canadian government's interest in brainwashing led to a grant to the McGill University group, directed by Hebb, to study the effects of perceptual deprivation in humans. Although susceptibility to propaganda was one of the effects studied, the interests of Hebb and his students went far beyond brainwashing. Measures of cortical activation and cognitive, perceptual, and motor performance were included in order to test Hebb's evolving physiological theory of behavior. The results excited a large range of psychologists, from physiological to psychoanalytic types, and showed that research inspired by mundane, practical interests can sometimes advance the aims of basic science. The results certainly were important in the development of Hebb's own optimal level theory as described in Chapter 2.
