Brain, Vol. 124, No. 11, 2335-2338,
November 2001
© 2001 Oxford University Press
Book reviews |
NEURONAL MECHANISMS OF MEMORY FORMATION: CONCEPTS OF LONG-TERM POTENTIATION AND BEYOND.
By Christian Hölscher. 2001. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Price £65. Pp. 528. ISBN 0-52177-067-X.
MRC Centre for Synaptic Plasticity, Department of Anatomy, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
The driving force behind this book is the enduring question of whether synaptic plasticity is a suitable model for understanding the basis of learning and memory. In this book synaptic plasticity is taken almost exclusively to mean long-term potentiation (LTP) and there is virtually no discussion of, for example, long-term depression or the cerebellum.
The book begins with an introduction by Holscher in which some of the main arguments contained within the rest of the book are rehearsed. This begins with an assessment of the validity of in vitro slice techniques and then questions whether in vitro studies are relevant to learning; whether models of LTP are relevant to learning; and whether knockout techniques and the employment of these are useful for understanding firstly LTP and then learning? This is followed by a critique of the different approaches that have attempted to correlate LTP