Modification of Brain Circuits through Experience

Excerpt

Although my colleagues and I were the first to demonstrate brain plasticity and modification of brain circuits through experience, this was not the original purpose of our work. Instead, we were looking for neural bases of the individual differences in problem-solving behavior exhibited by rats. As this research progressed, we discovered brain plasticity through serendipity.

To go back to the start, soon after I arrived at the University of California at Berkeley in 1951, my colleague David Krech asked me to consider with him what might be neural bases of the individual differences in tests of problem-solving behavior he had been finding among rats of inbred strains. As a “rat runner” of long standing, Krech had been impressed by sizeable individual differences of problem-solving abilities among rats of the same strain, sex, and age. I suggested that we might investigate whether individual differences in cortical acetylcholine metabolism correlated with individual differences in problem-solving ability. Krech turned to his friend Melvin Calvin, head of the campus Laboratory of Chemical Biodynamics, and Calvin agreed to encourage the younger chemists in his laboratory to collaborate with us if the project interested them. In the fall of 1953, I met three chemists for lunch in the faculty club and explained our project. One of them, Edward L. Bennett, decided that it might be interesting to collaborate with psychologists for a few months, and thus began a fruitful collaboration that lasted for more than 40 years. We also benefitted from the continued interest and support of Professor Calvin.