At the Beginning of Learning Studies There Was the Maze

A generally forgotten means of observing the developmental stages of scientific psychology is the study of maze devices. Considered in ancient times as a symbol of the process of moving in the direction of knowledge, the labyrinth, or maze, was at the centre of psychologists’ attention from the end of the 19th century. The current paper aims to reconstruct the history of the early years of maze learning, starting from the original interests of the experimenters in brain physiology or in mental evolution, and to examine how the experiments they designed continued to be important in the general theory of learning throughout the 20th century: maze studies helped uncover general principles about learning that can be applied to many species, including humans. At the beginning of the 21st century the question has become: what parts of the brain are used for spatial learning and memory, as shown by the Morris water maze, which is very popular in studies of behavioural neuroscience.