Donald Hebb Publishes The Organization of Behavior

It was around this mid-century turn in history when the advancements in neuroscience provided scientists in many different fields, a better understanding of the inner-workings of the human brain, neurons. This is critical because science and technology influence each other. And this work would provide future computer scientists (see Rosenblatt below) a brain-based model on which to inspire their work.

The paper itself was by McGill University psychologist Donald O. Hebb, who published The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory. He proposed that when one nerve cell repeatedly takes part in firing another, some growth process or metabolic change makes the first more efficient at firing the second. Frequently repeated stimulation would build groups of such cells, which he called cell assemblies, and he described a series of their actions as the thought process.

Early AI researcher Frank Rosenblatt named Hebb’s work as an inspiration for his 1958 perceptron. The slogan “cells that fire together, wire together” came later, from the neurobiologist Carla Shatz in a 1992 Scientific American article.