What the Chick Can Tell Us About the Process and Structure of Memory

Abstract

Abstract Being the final chapter in this book has some advantages; the pos1t10n enables one to try to extract some common themes and to set one’s own interests in the context of, or even in contention with, ideas and issues that have been raised earlier. I will try to identify some of these issues and to show how experiments from my own lab, using the young chick as a model for the study of memory mechanisms, may perhaps cast light on them. The overarching problem seems to be whether it is possible to build a general theory that can unify-or at least put into a common context-the disparate approaches and findings concerning the cellular processes of memory formation. As earlier chapters have perhaps inadvertently revealed, we are still far from that point. We do not even yet know how many different theories of memory might be required by the multiplicity of phenomena embraced within that term. Let me try to tease apart some of the paradoxes and dichotomies that, depending on one’s viewpoint, either enrich or impede our progress.