Karl Harry Pribram ([ˈpr̝̊iːbram]) (February 25, 1919 – January 19, 2015) was an American-Austrian researcher in the fields of cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuropsychology, holonomic brain theory, and holographic consciousness. He was a professor at Georgetown University and an emeritus professor at Stanford University at the time of his death. Before moving to Georgetown, he was the James P. and Anna King Distinguished Professor at Radford University. He was best known for his work on the holonomic brain theory.
Major Contributions
Cognitive revolution in psychology Plans and the Structure of Behavior (1960), co-written with George Armitage Miller and Eugene Galanter, is widely credited as a seminal work in the development of the field of cognitive psychology. This work fueled the cognitive revolution, which established cognitive psychology as the dominant trend in psychology, replacing behaviorism.
Emotional processes and the limbic system In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Pribram became "recognized for pioneering research defining the boundaries of the limbic system." Through more than 50 surgical experiments, Pribram's laboratory was able to establish that the limbic system, governing emotions, also interacted with the executive functions of the prefrontal cortex, governing personality, decision making, and social behavior. He discovered the "sensory specific" functions of the Association cortex, revealing that these systems organize the choices we make among sensory inputs, which supports higher order cognitive processes, such as perception, language and thought. In 1958, Pribram coined the term "the Four F's" ("Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing and Sex") to describe the functions of the fronto-limbic system (the limbic system including the pre-frontal and association cortex). Additionally, through extensive laboratory testing with primates, Pribram and his students discovered that removal of the amygdala from these systems affected this set of behaviors, resulting in reset of hierarchical relationships within the group.
Sensory processes and memory Pribram's work Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing (1991) conveyed his theory, based on experimental evidence, that sensory perception, along with memory storage and retrieval, is processed through dendritic fields, in a manner similar to quantum field theory. Pribram describes his discovery, through extensive experiments with graduate students Mortimer Mishkin, John Robert Anderson, and Leslie Ungerleider, of the importance of the inferior temporal cortex's role in vision. Until this discovery, the temporal lobe was thought to be devoted to hearing. In Brain and Perception, Pribram also addresses the longstanding question of whether brain functions are distributed or localized. He "emphasizes the fact that both distributed (holistic) and localized (structural) processes characterize brain function." He further analyzes wave-type input received by our senses (touch, taste, smell, sound and sight) through lens-like receptors (e.g., the cochlea for sound waves). Pribram provides models of his experimental data, developed with the Japanese mathematical physicists Kunio Yasue and Mari Jibu, in order to demonstrate how we receive, perceive, and retrieve information from the outside world ("navigate" our world).
Holonomic model
Karl Pribram first explored the metaphor of information storage in the brain as a hologram in his Languages of the Brain: Experimental Paradoxes and Principles in Neuropsychology (1971). In a 1974 review of Languages, in Behavioral Science Journal, R.P McDermott and Laurence Mucciolo stated "The book's contribution to neuropsychology will be hailed, developed and disputed for years to come." Pribram's holonomic model of brain processing is further developed in Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing (1991), which contains the extension of his work with David Bohm, as well as numerous quantum and mathematical physicists. This theory - derived from 40 years of laboratory experiments and hundreds of tests - demonstrates the following: that certain brain processes, such as memory, do not take place solely through the axons, synapses, or reflex-type actions but rather through a concerted, ever-changing process that operates similarly to quantum field theory. Processing occurs in the neuron's felt-like fields of fine-fibered dendrites (branches), as well as in the dynamic electrical fields that surround these dendrites. Hence, Karl Pribram's holonomic brain theory demonstrates that some brain processes are distributed (non-localized) in the form of interference wave patterns, and can interact on a quantum level. Pribram based his initial theory on the Fourier Transform, which enables one to analyze any repeated wave-form. After numerous conversations with Nobel Laureate Gábor Dénes [Dennis Gabor] inventor of holography, Pribram expanded his model to incorporate Gabor's holographic model of information storage into Pribram's holonomic theory of brain processing.
The past and future of brain research Pribram's last important publication, published two years before his death, is The Form Within: My Point of View (2013). In this scientific memoir, Pribram describes 200 years of the interrelationships among the fields of brain research, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, coupled with his personal insights derived from 75 years of active participation in all of these fields. Pribram shares his hands-on research, as well as his publications with colleagues over the decades, and his intimate interactions with well-known figures in philosophy, psychology, physics, and neuroscience, including: Nobel Laureates Sir John Eccles, Ilya Prigogine, Dennis Gabor, Francis Crick, Hubel and Wiesel; and scientists such as B. F. Skinner, Wolfgang Kohler, Karl Lashley, Aleksandr Romanovitch Luria, Eugene Sokolov, David Bohm, and many others. The Form Within is widely regarded as a tour de force in the history of brain research, described by the Journal of Integrative Neuroscience as, "... an amazingly clear, voluminously detailed, yet easily accessible description of [Pribram's] experiments over the past seven decades in neurocognition by man and animals."
Career
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