Associative learning and long-term potentiation: cellular mechanisms compared.

The potential relationship of LTP (Long Term Potentiation) to behavioral learning is an important issue. An important question in whether the cellular mechanisms of LTP and naturally occurring learning, share the same "memory" formation process or whether these two phenomena are subserved by two different types of storage processes. We would suggest that at least in the case of the hippocampal region, LTP could well share common mechanisms of formation with well studied examples of both cognitive and non-cognitive, or habit memory. We have considered several lines of evidence which demonstrate striking similarities between the phenomena of learning, especially associative learning and LTP.