ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the century, Müller and Pilzecker (1900) proposed their “perserveration-consolidation hypothesis,” which stated that activity in the nervous system triggered by an event did not stop immediately but instead “perseverated.” When this perseveration was complete, a stable memory trace was established. Hebb, in his seminal work The Organization of behavior, restated and expanded this theory. He proposed that two processes were necessary for the brain to retain information: First, the continual reverberation of a neural circuit and second, a structural change in neural patterns. The reverberating activity had to continue for a period of time in order for the structural change to take place. Consolidation was defined as the transformation of this temporary reverberating circuit into a permanent memory trace. Both theories therefore predicted that events that disturbed this continuing neural activity would prevent retention.
