Definition
Connectionism
Connectionism is the doctrine that associations are physically stored as connections in the brain. It provides the physical substrate for associationism: mental links between mental representations are realised as physical links between neural structures in the brain.
Origins
The idea was first articulated by David Hartley in Observations on Man (1749). He proposed:
- Sensory input reaches the brain as vibrations.
- Memories are miniature vibrations — vibratiuncles — in the same brain regions.
- Compound ideas arise from connecting vibratiuncles to current sensory input.
At the time, the neuron was unknown; the proposal was purely mechanistic.