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Editorial: Modularity, Mass-Action and Memory

The present special issue is the result of a call for papers on human memory, preferably with a biological perspective, so as to make it an appropriate companion issue to the animal section issue on memory. When invited to write an editorial, I accepted, provided I was to be allowed the traditional prerogative of writers of editorials, namely licence to substitute opinion for evidence and speculation for expertise. The topic on which I want to offer my ill-formed speculation is the traditional question of the extent to which human memory is modular, on the one hand, and to what extent Lashley’s concept of mass-action can be applied to those parts of the brain responsible for memory. I speculate with some trepidation, as a cognitive psychologist dabbling in a classical area of physiological psychology. I would suggest, however, that this is an issue of direct current interest both to cognitive psychologists and to those interested in memory in animals, and as such is perhaps an appropriate editorial topic for this particular issue of the journal. Over the last decade or so, the combination of neuropsychological single case techniques with the development of cognitive approaches to human memory have produced a considerable advance in our functional understanding of human memory. Theoretical development has typically occurred by means of a series of dissociations established between different aspects of memory, allowing the previous unitary concept of memory to be fractionated into a number of interrelated subsystems. The first example of this was the distinction between short-term and long-term memory strongly supported by studies of the classical amnesic patient H M (Milner, 1966), followed by the demonstration that this neuropsychological dissociation could be tied in with the theoretical distinctions proposed by cognitive psychologists working with normal