The Laws of Learning in Terms of the Neurone
We have good evidence that the brain is concerned in learning and retention. Loss of some of the cortex through injury often brings loss of learned reactions, and the kind of reactions lost differs with the part of the cortex affected. Injury in the occipital lobe brings loss of visual knowledge, and injury in the neighborhood of the auditory sense-center brings loss of auditory knowledge.
Injury to the retina or optic nerve, occurring early in life, results in an under-development of the cortex in the occipital lobe. The nerve cells remain small and their dendrites few and meager, because they have not received their normal amount of exercise through stimulation from the eye.
Exercise, then, has the same general effect on neurones that it has on muscles; it causes them to grow and it probably also improves their internal condition so that they act more readily and more strongly. The growth, in the cortex, of dendrites and of the end-brushes of axons that interlace with the dendrites, must improve the synapses between one neurone and another, and thus make better conduction paths between one part of the cortex and another, and also between the cortex and the lower sensory and motor centers.
The law of exercise has thus a very definite meaning when [{415}] translated into neural terms. It means that the synapses between stimulus and response are so improved, when traversed by nerve currents in the making of a reaction, that nerve currents can get across them more easily the next time.
Fig. 63.--The law of exercise in terms of synapse. A nerve current is supposed to pass along this pair of neurones in the direction of the arrow. Every time it passes, it exercises the end-brush and dendrites at the synapse (for the "passage of a nerve current" really means activity on the part of the neurones through which it passes), and the after-effect of this exercise is growth of the exercised parts, and consequent improvement of the synapse as a linkage between one neurone and the other. Repeated exercise may probably bring a synapse from a very loose condition to a state of close interweaving and excellent power of transmitting the nerve current.
The more a synapse is used, the better synapse it becomes, and the better linkage it provides between some stimulus and some response. The cortex is the place where linkages are made in the process of learning, and it is there also that forgetting, or atrophy, takes place through disuse. Exercise makes a synapse closer, disuse lets it relapse into a loose and poorly conducting state.
The law of combination, also, is readily translated into [{416}] neural terms. The "pre-existing loose linkages" which it assumed to exist undoubtedly do exist in the form of "association fibers" extending in vast numbers from any one part of the cortex to many other parts. These fibers are provided by native constitution, but probably terminate rather loosely in the cortex until exercise has developed them. They may be compared to telephone wires laid down in the cables through the streets and extending into the houses, but still requiring a little fine work to attach them properly to the telephone instruments.
Fig. 64.--Diagram for the learning of the name of an object, transformed into a neural diagram. The vocal movement of saying the name is made in response to the auditory stimulus of hearing the name, but when the neurone in the "speech center" is thus made active, it takes up current also from the axon that reaches it from the visual center, even though the synapse between this axon and the speech neurone is far from close. This particular synapse between the visual and the speech centers, being thus exercised, is left in an improved condition. Each neurone in the diagram represents hundreds in the brain, for brain activities are carried on by companies and regiments of neurones. (Figure text: object seen, visual center name heard, auditory center, speech center, name spoken)
The diagrams illustrating different cases under the law of combination can easily be perfected into neural diagrams, though, to be sure, any diagram is ultra-simple as compared with the great number of neurones that take part in even a simple reaction.
The reader will be curious to know now much of this neural interpretation of our psychological laws is observed fact, and how much speculation. Well, we cannot as yet [{417}] observe the brain mechanism in actual operation--not in any detail. We have good evidence, as already outlined, for growth of the neurones and their branches through exercise.
Fig. 65.--Control, in multiplying. The visual stimulus of two numbers in a little column, has preformed linkages both with the adding response and with that of multiplying. But the mental set for adding being inactive at the moment, and that for multiplying active (because the subject means to multiply), the multiplying response is facilitated.
We have perfectly good evidence of the law of "unitary response to multiple stimuli" from the physiological study of reflex action; and we have perfectly good anatomical evidence of the convergence and divergence of neural paths of connection, as required by the law of combination. The association fibers extending from one part to another of the cortex are an anatomical fact. [Footnote: [See p. 56.]] Facilitation is a fact, and that means that a stimulus which could not of itself arouse a response can coöperate with another stimulus that has a direct connection with that response, and reinforce its effect. In short, all the elements required for a neural law of combination are known facts, and the only matter of doubt is whether we have built these elements together aright in our interpretation. It is not pure speculation, by any means.