100 Years of Consolidation— Remembering Müller and Pilzecker
- 1W.M. Keck Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Texas–Houston Medical School, Houston, Texas 77030 USA, 2Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego, and Departments of Psychiatry, Neurosciences, and Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093 USA
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
The origin of the concept of memory consolidation and the introduction of the term “consolidirung” (consolidation) to the modern science of memory are generally credited to Georg Elias Müller (1850–1934), professor at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and his student Alfons Pilzecker. Their seminal monograph “Experimentelle Beiträge zur Lehre vom Gedächtnis” (Experimental Contributions to the Science of Memory), published in 1900, proposed that learning does not induce instantaneous, permanent memories but that memory takes time to be fixed (or consolidated). Consequently, memory remains vulnerable to disruption for a period of time after learning.
Georg Müller was among the founders of experimental psychology. Inspired by the work of Gustav Fechner (1801–1887), Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), and Herman Ebbinghaus (1859–1909),5 he was an early advocate of the view that mental function results from the action of matter, and that learning and memory should thus exhibit lawful properties. In their 300-page monograph, Müller …
