Donald Hebb * Wanted to be a Writer Unlike Physicist Parents * At 33 was a Fellow at Montreal Neurological Institute * Absent Stimulation Causes Deterioration and Hallucinations * First Non-American to Win APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award * Had an Award for Canadian Scientists Named after Himself Donald Hebb decided at an early age he did not want to be a Physicist like his parents. He had other aspirations, he wanted to write and study. At the age of 33, Hebb received a position at the Montreal Neurological Institute as a research fellow (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009). The research Hebb conducted ultimately contributed greatly to the modern knowledge of the brain. He discovered, when there is an absence of stimulation the resulting product is the brain has more difficulty in its ability to problem solve and even to concentrate (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009). The absence causes deterioration in the ability to do things quickly and efficiently, causing extreme difficulty. Hebb has even reported a few people who said they had experienced hallucinations from the absence of stimulation (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009). Hebb’s research was extremely helpful in the studies of airplane pilots and of truck drivers. Many of these workers had reported having hallucinations while on the job. Hebb discovered the hallucinations were due to the fact they were not experiencing enough mental stimulation to keep their brains alert and active. From the age of 43 until he retired at the age of 68, Hebb worked as a psychology professor at McGill, teaching students about his research and his life work (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009). Hebb was also quite influential in the advancements of interrogation techniques; his research of sensory deprivation techniques was very beneficial in the realm of interrogation. There are many of his ideas regarding interrogation which are still in use today. Donald Hebb was the first person who was not a citizen of the United States to win the APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009). Another major accomplishment of Hebb was the award which was named after him which honors the scientific contributions of Canadians (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009). * Heuristic Model of Psychology * Brain is not a Switch Board it Works as a Whole * Brain Does Not Have to be Whole to Function * Cell Assembly & Phase Sequence – Fundamental Tools * First to Connect this Idea * Heuristic Influences are Still Present Today
Donald Hebb followed a relatively heuristic model of psychology (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009). Hebb believed the brain was not a “complex switchboard” like many other theorists of his time believed. He was very stern in the fact the brain works as an entire entity. In other words, Hebb’s belief was the brain was a whole instead of many pieces (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009). He discovered if you could remove a portion of a person’s brain, there would be no decline in the functioning of the brain. This was a radical thought for his time. Hebb had two major terms which he often used in his theories, the first is ‘cell assembly’ and the second is ‘phase sequence’ (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009). The biggest contribution Hebb made in his theories was the fact he was able to create a demonstration which showed the processes which occur in cognition by only using neurons and synapses can indeed be studied. He called the neurons and synapses his “fundamental tools” in research (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009). Hebb was the first psychologist to actually make this connection of studying the neurons and synapses; no one else had thought it was so simple. Hebb’s influence of the heuristic nature can still be seen through the many ideas which have come since the development of his theories. Not only did Hebb's model for the working of the mind influence how psychologists understood the processing of stimuli within the mind but it also paved the way for the creation of computational machines which mimicked the biological processes of a living nervous system. While the dominant form of synaptic transmission in the nervous system was later found to be chemical, modern artificial neural networks are still based on the transmission of signals via electrical impulses which Hebbian theory was first designed around.

Contributions of Hebb * Hebb’s Law * Hebbian Theory * Hebbian Synapse
Throughout history, there have been many movements in the field of psychology. Theories such as functionalism, behaviorism and associationalism have made great strides in the quest for understanding how humans behave and interact with society. By using those earlier schools of thought and moving forward, psychologists have continued to probe into those fundamental questions. One principle of the behaviorists was that the brain functioned like a switchboard (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009). Advances in the study of the brain’s physiology allowed psychologists like Donald Hebb, who studied the effects of brain surgery on the psychology of patients, to dispute such a theory. Hebb’s work in the field of neuro-physiology paved the way for advances in engineering, robotics, and education. His contribution to human knowledge is significant, not only in the theory and its applications, but also in the approach to research that he held and taught his students, namely that even when a theory is wrong (as he often thought his own were) if it was testable it had value and would lead to better understanding. Hebb also became critical of the Stanford-Binet and Wechsler intelligence tests when used with brain surgery patients. These tests were designed to measure overall intelligence, whereas Hebb believed tests should be designed to measure more specific effects which surgery could have had on the patient. To achieve this, he created the Adult Comprehension Test and the Picture Anomaly Test. Putting the Picture Anomaly Test to use, he provided the first indication the right temporal lobe was involved in visual recognition. He also showed removal of large parts of the frontal lobe had little effect on intelligence. In fact, in one adult patient, who had a large portion of his frontal lobes removed in order to treat his epilepsy, Hebb noted "a striking post-operative improvement in personality and intellectual capacity". From these sorts of results, he started to believe the frontal lobes were instrumental in learning only early in life. In order to test his theory of the changing role of the frontal lobes with age, he designed a variable path maze for rats. Known as the Hebb-Williams maze, this became a method for measuring spatial and working memory of rats later used in countless studies of animal intelligence. Hebb used the maze to test the intelligence of rats blinded at different developmental stages, concluding “there is a lasting effect of infant experience on the problem-solving ability of the adult rat" (Morris, C., & Maisto, A., 2001, p.327). This became one of the main principles of developmental psychology, later helping those arguing the importance of the proposed Head Start programs for preschool children in economically poor neighborhoods. Hebb’s theory “When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A's efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased” (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2009) became known as Hebbian theory and the models which follow this theory are said to exhibit Hebbian learning. This theory is often paraphrased as "Neurons that fire together wire together”( Olson & Hergenhahn,2009) and is commonly referred to as Hebb's Law. The combination of neurons which could be grouped together as one processing unit, Hebb referred to as "cell-assemblies" and their combination of connections made up the ever-changing algorithm which dictated the brain's response to stimuli. These cell-assemblies are also known as Hebbian Synapse.