English Other Idioms / Maxims / Sayings brain science - conditioning process

Hi,
I'm not sure about the meaning of "coming to terms with this idea" in the passage below.
I think it is used in the sense of "was beginning to understand" this process. Pavlov is older than Hebb, so I think he didn't have all the technology that was available to Hebb and could only imagine what actually happened in the brain..

What's your opinion?
thank you very much in advance for any hint!


One way neuroscientists have expressed the idea is that “neurons that fire together wire together.”
This phrase, known as “Hebb’s axiom,” named after the Canadian neuropsychologist Donald Hebb, essentially explains that when neurons fire simultaneously in response to an experience, those neurons become connected to each other, forming a network. And when an experience is repeated over and over, it deepens and strengthens the connections among those neurons. So when they fire together, they wire together.


The famous physiologist Ivan Pavlov was ** coming to terms with this idea ** when he found that his dogs would salivate not only when actual food appeared before them, but also when he rang the dinner bell for them to come eat. The dogs’ “salivation neurons” became wired, or functionally linked, to their “dinner-bell neurons.”