Learning and brain lesions: 2

Abstract

Historically, experiments on visual learning preceded those on touch learning discussed in the last chapter. These earliest experiments, already outlined in Sections 11.1.1 and 11.1.2, showed that the vertical lobe plays an important part in learning by sight, and a high proportion of the brain lesion and visual training experiments made since then has been concerned with the effects of vertical lobe removal. As we shall see, these effects suggest that this part could be a complete learning machine, capable of storing information and changing its output as a result of experience. It has a very distinctive and apparently quite simple structure, very similar, at least at light microscope level, to that of the subfrontal and it is readily accessible to surgery. The tantalizing implication is that the vertical lobe has all the elements that could allow us to understand how associative learning works in the octopus, and perhaps all the information that we need to evolve a realistic neural hardware model for learning in animals generally.