Are the mechanisms of long-term potentiation involved in learning? – Richard Morris (p.42)

The long-lasting nature of the synaptic change induced in long-term potentiation (LTP) has, ever since its discovery 20 years ago, fuelled speculation that its underlying neural mechanisms might occur during and be necessary for certain kinds of learning (Bliss & Collingridge, 1993). LTP has other properties analogous to memory in addition to its persistence – notably associativity and input-specificity – these being relevant to the conditions under which behavioural learning takes place and to information storage-capacity, respectively.