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." 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 [<nowiki/>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

Private practice and Yerkes

In the 1940s, Pribram became one of the first 300 board-certified neurosurgeons in the world after receiving his MD from University of Chicago at the age of 22. Shortly after the end of WWII, Pribram succeeded Lashley as director of Yerkes; under his tenure the field of animal neuropsychology expanded and flourished.

These early years would prove to be influential in Pribram's development of theories about the structure of the brain and related mental processes. Two of the earliest discoveries Pribram made while at Yerkes were as follows: 1) the relationship between the frontal cortex (personality, decision making, and social behavior) and the limbic forebrain (emotions); and 2) the functions of the posterior cortex (visual processing, spatial reasoning, and memory). Robert Livingston, and James Stevenson.

Stanford University (1959-1989)

After his tenure at Yale, Pribram moved to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. For the next 30 years he taught neurophysiology and physiological psychology at Stanford with joint appointments in the Department of Psychiatry (Medical School Faculty) and of Psychology (Arts and Sciences Faculty).

During this time, Pribram pioneered the field of neuropsychology, leading groundbreaking research into the interrelations of the brain, behavior, and cognition.

While a professor at Stanford, with joint appointments in the departments of Psychology and Psychiatry, Pribram was honored with a Lifetime Grant from the US Office of Naval Research as well as a Lifetime Research Career Award from the National Institutes of Health.

Upon becoming emeritus at Stanford University, Pribram accepted the position of the James P. and Anna King Distinguished Professor at Radford University and, in 1989, was appointed Eminent Scholar of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Radford built the Center for Brain Research and Informational Sciences (B.R.A.I.N.S.) for Pribram to direct with the support of Alastair Harris, chair of the psychology department. The award was created to honor significant individuals whose work transcends the conventional framework of scientific understanding.

  • First recipient of the Dagmar and Vaclav Havel Award: The VIZE 97 Prize (1999)
  • Culver Man of the Year, Culver Military Academy (2000)

The Aquarian Conspiracy

Marilyn Ferguson summarized and interpreted Karl Pribram's holonomic model of brain processing in her popular book, The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980). In the book she also describes how Pribram's son, John Pribram, Ph.D., introduced him to the work of David Bohm, leading to the further development of Pribram's holonomic brain theory. Additionally, Ferguson produced the Brain/Mind Bulletin, a science newsletter dedicated to sharing cutting-edge research from prominent scientists and theorists including Pribram, Bohm, and Prigogine.

SyberVision

Steve DeVore, the founder of SyberVision, worked as a research assistant to Pribram at Stanford, where he would investigate the function of mirror neurons. Together they published The Neuropsychology of Achievement which proposed the concept of creating an "image of achievement" to attain one's goals.

Feldenkrais Foundation

While at Stanford, Pribram was introduced to Dr. Moshé Feldenkrais, the founder of the Feldenkrais Method. Pribram would later visit Feldenkrais' training program in California where they engaged in a series of conversations focused on the holographic and dynamic qualities of brain functioning.

Selected books

  • Hamburg, D. A., Pribram, K. H., and Stunkard, A. J. (Eds.) (1970) Perception and Its Disorders. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins.
  • Hyden, H., Lorenz, K., Magoun, H.W., Penfield, W., and Pribram, K.H. (Eds) (1969) On the Biology of Learning. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc.
  • King, J. S., and Pribram, K.H., (Eds.) (1995) Scale in Conscious Experience: Is the Brain Too Important to be Left to Specialists to Study?, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
  • Miller, G. A., Galanter, E., and Pribram, K. H. (1960) Plans and the Structure of Behavior. New York: Henry Holt, 1960. (Russian trans; also in Japanese, German, Spanish, Italian.)
  • Isaacson, R. L., and Pribram, K. H. (Eds.) (1975) The Hippocampus, Volumes I and II. New York: Plenum.
  • Isaacson, R. L., and Pribram, K. H. (Eds.) (1986) The Hippocampus, Volumes III and IV. New York: Plenum.
  • Pribram, K. H., and Broadbent, D. (Eds.) (1970) Biology of Memory. New York: Academic Press.
  • Pribram, K. H., and Gill, M. M. (1976) Freud's `Project' Re-Assessed: Preface to Contemporary Cognitive Theory and Neuropsychology. New York: Basic Books.
  • Pribram, K.H., and King, J.S. (Eds.) (1996) Learning as Self-Organization. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
  • Pribram, K. H., and Luria, A. R. (Eds.) (1973) Psychophysiology of the Frontal Lobes. New York: Academic Press.
  • Pribram, K.H., and Ramirez, J.M. (1980) Cerebro, Mente y Holograma. Madrid: Alhambra.
  • Pribram, K. H. (Ed.) (1969) Brain and Behavior, Volumes I-IV. London: Penguin, Ltd.
  • Pribram, K. H. (1971) What Makes Man Human. (39th James Arthur Lecture on the Evolution of the Human Brain, 1970). New York: American Museum of Natural History.
  • Pribram, K. H. (1971) Languages of the Brain: Experimental Paradoxes and Principles in Neuropsychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall; Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1977; New York: Brandon House, 1982. (Translations in Russian, Japanese, Italian, Spanish)
  • Pribram, K. H. (Ed.) (1974) Central Processing of Sensory Input. The Neurosciences: Third Study Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Pribram, K. H. (1991) Brain and Perception: Holonomy and Structure in Figural Processing. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
  • Pribram, K.H. (Ed.) (1993) Rethinking Neural Networks: Quantum Fields and Biological Data. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
  • Pribram, K.H. (Ed.) (1994) Origins: Brain & Self Organization. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
  • Pribram, K.H. (1995) Cerebro Y Conciencia. Madrid, Spain: Diaz de Santos.
  • Pribram, K.H. (Ed.) (1998) Brain and Values: Is a Biological Science of Values Possible. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  • Pribram, K.H. (2013) The Form Within. Prospecta Press.

References

  • Karl Pribram's Website karlpribram.com
  • Karl Pribram, MD interviewed by Howard Kaufman, MD (American Association of Neurological Surgeons)
  • Meeting of the Minds: Interview with Karl Pribram
  • Photos of Karl Pribram with friends and colleagues (KatherineNeville.com)