This book is the result of the contributions presented at a conference held from August 30 to September 1, 1984 at the Universite Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France. This meeting was organized under the joint auspices of the European Brain and Behaviour Society (EBBS) and the Societe Fran~aise pour 1 'Etude du Comportement Animal (SFECA). The objective of this meeting was to bring together an international group of participants to evaluate and to report on recent research in three broad and overlapping fields within the general theme of the relationships between brain plasticity and learning and memory. These three fields are "developmental plasticity" "adaptive plasticity" and "restorative plas tici ty." Al though the boundaries between these fie Ids are a rna t ter of debate (see Introduction), they have been retained as the major sections of this volume, the arrangement of which roughly parallels that of the meeting. We believe and very much hope that the contents of this volume convey an internal consistency despite the diversity of the material presented.