Donald Hebb & The Organization of Behavior: The Physical Structure of Thought

Описание: In 1949, Donald Hebb did the impossible: he explained how a thought becomes flesh. Before Hebb, psychology was dominated by Behaviorists who refused to look inside the brain. By 1951, through controversial sensory deprivation experiments and brilliant theoretical leaps, Hebb proved that the brain physically rewires itself based on experience.

In this episode of Narrative Labs, we deep dive into Donald Hebb’s masterpiece, "The Organization of Behavior." We dismantle the famous rule—"Cells that fire together, wire together"—and reveal the specific biological architecture Hebb predicted decades before we had the tools to see it.

We explore:

Donald Hebb’s War on the "Black Box": Why he challenged Pavlov and Skinner.

The Hebb Synapse: The precise mechanism of Long-Term Potentiation (LTP).

The Phase Sequence: How Hebb’s theory of cell assemblies predicted neural networks.

The Legacy: How Hebb’s work directly inspired Frank Rosenblatt’s Perceptron and the AI revolution.

Why It Matters: Donald Hebb didn’t just write a textbook; he wrote the source code for modern neuroscience. Understanding Hebb is the only way to understand how you learn, how you forget, and how machines are beginning to think.

Keywords: Donald Hebb, The Organization of Behavior, Hebbian Learning, Hebb’s Rule, Cell Assemblies, Phase Sequences, Long-Term Potentiation (LTP), History of Psychology, Neural Networks, Frank Rosenblatt, Sensory Deprivation, McGill University, Neuroplasticity.

C. Timestamps / Chapters

00:00 - The 1951 Sensory Deprivation Experiment

03:15 - Donald Hebb vs. The Behaviorists

05:40 - Hebb's "Cell Assembly" Explained

08:20 - The Reverberating Circuit (Short Term Memory)

11:05 - Hebb's Rule: "Fire Together, Wire Together"

13:50 - The Biological Proof (NMDA & LTP)

16:30 - Hebb's Influence on AI (The Perceptron)

19:10 - Conclusion: The Use-It-Or-Lose-It Brain