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Science 25 September 1998:
Vol. 281. no. 5385, pp. 1975 - 1976
DOI: 10.1126/science.281.5385.1975
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Perspectives

NEUROSCIENCE:
The Saturation Debate

T. V. P. Bliss

A question hotly debated in neuroscience concerns the origins of learning: Does long-term potentiation--the enhancement of synaptic function triggered by strong stimulus--represent the neural basis of learning? In his Perspective, Bliss discusses results reported in the same issue by Moser et al. in which the authors have revisited a classic experiment carried out 10 years ago. With strengthened experimental design, Moser et al. used implanted electrodes to saturate the long-term potentiation in rats trained to solve a maze problem. As predicted by the LTP-as-learning hypothesis, the saturated rats did poorly, being unable to learn the maze, in comparison to the control animals.

The author is in the Division of Neurophysiology, National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London NW7 1AA, UK. E-mail: tbliss{at}ns1.nimr.mrc.ac.uk

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)