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." 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. 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. 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). 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. 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 ==