Journal ArticleDOI
What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain
J. Y. Lettvin,Humberto R. Maturana,Warren S. McCulloch,Walter Pitts +3 more
- Vol. 47, Iss: 11, pp 1940-1951
TLDR
The results show that for the most part within that area of the optic nerve of a frog, it is not the light intensity itself but rather the pattern of local variation of intensity that is the exciting factor.Abstract:
In this paper, we analyze the activity of single fibers in the optic nerve of a frog. Our method is to find what sort of stimulus causes the largest activity in one nerve fiber and then what is the exciting aspect of that stimulus such that variations in everything else cause little change in the response. It has been known for the past 20 years that each fiber is connected not to a few rods and cones in the retina but to very many over a fair area. Our results show that for the most part within that area, it is not the light intensity itself but rather the pattern of local variation of intensity that is the exciting factor. There are four types of fibers, each type concerned with a different sort of pattern. Each type is uniformly distributed over the whole retina of the frog. Thus, there are four distinct parallel distributed channels whereby the frog's eye informs his brain about the visual image in terms of local pattern independent of average illumination. We describe the patterns and show the functional and anatomical separation of the channels. This work has been done on the frog, and our interpretation applies only to the frog.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Receptive fields, binocular interaction and functional architecture in the cat's visual cortex
David H. Hubel,Torsten N. Wiesel +1 more
TL;DR: This method is used to examine receptive fields of a more complex type and to make additional observations on binocular interaction and this approach is necessary in order to understand the behaviour of individual cells, but it fails to deal with the problem of the relationship of one cell to its neighbours.
Book
The Intentional Stance
TL;DR: The Intentional Stance as discussed by the authors is the first full-scale presentation of a theory of intentionality that has been developed for almost twenty years, and it can be seen as a pre-emptive strategy of interpretation that presupposes the rationality of the people or other entities we are hoping to understand and predict.
Journal ArticleDOI
From sensation to cognition.
TL;DR: The destruction of transmodal epicentres causes global impairments such as multimodal anomia, neglect and amnesia, whereas their selective disconnection from relevant unimodal areas elicits modality-specific impairmentssuch as prosopagnosia, pure word blindness and category-specific anomias.
Journal ArticleDOI
Ferrier Lecture: Functional Architecture of Macaque Monkey Visual Cortex
David H. Hubel,Torsten N. Wiesel +1 more
TL;DR: In most respects the above description fits the newborn monkey just as well as the adult, suggesting that area 17 is largely genetically programmed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Principles of neurodynamics. perceptrons and the theory of brain mechanisms
TL;DR: The background, basic sources of data, concepts, and methodology to be employed in the study of perceptrons are reviewed, and some of the notation to be used in later sections are presented.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Discharge patterns and functional organization of mammalian retina
TL;DR: The Limulus preparation shows many features which are similar to other simple sense organs, for instance, stretch receptors, however, instead of photochemical events, stretch-deformation acts as the adequate stimulus on sensory terminals and is translated into a characteristic discharge pattern.
Journal ArticleDOI
The response of single optic nerve fibers of the vertebrate eye to illumination of the retina
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