ABSTRACT
This chapter arises from consideration of “consolidation”—what it is, what its characteristics are, when it occurs, and what its consequences are at the behavioral level. We shall not discuss how consolidation occurs—that is, we shall not discuss the neurophysiological events presumed to lead to the neurochemical and perhaps neuroanatomical changes that have long been supposed and more recently have begun to be physically identified in vitro at the synaptic level. We could offer nothing of interest on this topic in any case, and we seek in this chapter a level of generality at the behavioral level that is as yet inconsistent with what is known about the physiological basis of learning and memory. In short, we wish to discuss human as well as animal memory, and just as the cognitive analysis of memory processing in animals may be said to lag that with human subjects, so it is that the relationship between neurophysiological functioning and memory is understood less clearly for human than animal subjects.
