ABSTRACT
Karl Lashley spent a major part of his career attempting to identify the areas of the brain that underlie learning and memory functions (Beach, Hebb, Morgan, & Nissen, 1960). A basic research strategy used by Lashley was to assess the acquisition and retention of discrimination learning in rats following surgical destruction of parts of the cortex generally thought to be involved in the formation of associations and with memory. After reviewing the evidence obtained from these and other experiments, Lashley suggested that little had been discovered about the localization of learning and memory processes in the brain. Given that the substrates for memory could not be located, Lashley concluded somewhat whimsically, but also with a degree of resignation, that he sometimes felt that “learning just is not possible.”
