Cell Assemblies

• The Hebb rule leads naturally to Hebb's concept of Cell Assemblies, the neural basis of concepts.
• Each concept is represented by a set of neurons that tend to have high mutual synaptic strength.
• So, a long-term memory is represented by neurons and synaptic strength.
• A short term memory is represented by those neurons firing.
• That means a sensation can ignite a CA, and the memory can persist after the sensation stops.
• There has been a lot of work with symbolic AI over the last 50 years, but it suffers from the symbol grounding problem, which leads to brittle systems.
• CAs offer a solution to that problem.