Understanding Association Learning for Everyone: The Backbone of Deep Learning and LLM
Association Learning in the Human Brain
Definition and Examples: Association learning (AL) is the process through which our brain connects two or more pieces of information together after simultaneous exposure. Think about the smell of your favorite food. If you’ve ever connected that smell to feelings of hunger or memories of a specific event, then you’ve experienced association learning.
The classic example of this in psychology is “Pavlov’s dog”. In this experiment, a dog was conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell after the bell was repeatedly presented simultaneously with food. The dog learned to associate the bell with the arrival of food.
Another example is the association that we learn between people’s voices and appearances. For instance, if you close your eyes and hear someone’s voice that is familiar to you, then first, a set of neurons will fire because of recognizing a known voice. This firing will be transmitted to another set of neurons that are responsible for vision and connected to this person’s voice. This results in firing the vision neurons even if your eyes are closed and will make you imagine the person’s appearance/look. This association happened because of the frequent exposure to this…
