April 23, 2019 Tuesday
Bedtime Story
Men who Pioneered the Concept of Visual Receptive Fields
Thus one must not mistake the different
concepts of angle of view and receptive field.
Visual receptive fields were initially
considered to be two-dimensional and represented as circles or squares or other
such two-dimensional shapes though in fact these shapes are merely a thin
section or slice of the entire volume of the visual receptive field.
Whereas by definition receptive fields
pertain to a single neuron the idea of the receptive filed can be further
extended higher up in the way that was first proposed by two American
scientists who were originally not Americans as often happens in this great
nation.
No functional neuron either in the visual
cortex or in the retina exists in isolation since that neuron would be
functionally a useless entity much like an isolated logic gate in the form of a
lone silicon transistor wafer would be useless in an integrated circuit.
In fact the very word “integrated” betrays
or rather explicitly illustrates this point in contrast to the discrete
circuits.
Integrated circuit as defined by the Global
Standards for the Microelectronics Industry is a circuit in which all or some
of the circuit elements are inseparably associated and electrically
interconnected so that it is considered to be indivisible for the purposes of
construction and commerce.
Brain and thereby retina too is an
integrated circuit whose immensely complex synaptic circuitry we have yet not
yet completely unraveled even though great progress has been made and is
continuously being made.
David Hubel (Canadian American
neurophysiologist) along with Torsten Wiesel - a Swedish neurophysiologist
published a paper in 1962 in the Journal of Physiology that was titled
“Receptive fields, binocular interaction and functional architecture in the
cat’s visual cortex”.
These two men partnered as research
scientists for more than twenty years starting in 1958 at the Johns Hopkins
School of Medicine and this would go on to become one of the greatest pairings
in the history of genuine science research.
In 1959 they moved on to Harvard and most
of their experimental work together would be conducted there.
David Hubel had moved into Johns Hopkins in
1954 whereas Wiesel arrived in 1955 to work under the great Hungarian-American
neurophysiologist Stephen Kuffler who is often referred to as “Father of Modern
Neuroscience”.
Stephen Kuffler is yet another Hungarian
scientist who did America proud and should rightly be listed as one of “The
Martians” that Leo Szilard had popularized.
These Martians - Szilard had proposed –
were the evidence of intelligent life beyond earth and that Hungary served as a
front for aliens on Mars.
Kuffler is regarded as a true, original and
highly creative neuroscientist who established the Department of Harvard
Neurobiology in 1966.
So even though both these men – Hubel and Wiesel
- were at Johns Hopkins at the same time for three years their paths crossed
each other only in 1958.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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