scholarly journals A celebration of the 50th anniversary of David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel'sReceptive fields of single neurones in the cat's striate cortex

2009 ◽  
Vol 587 (12) ◽  
pp. 2721-2732 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Striate Cortex ◽  
50Th Anniversary ◽  
Single Neurones

8. Receptive fields of single neurones in the cat’s striate cortex

1966 ◽  
pp. 129-150
Author(s):  
D.H. Hubel ◽  
T.N. Wiesel
Keyword(s):  
Striate Cortex ◽  
Receptive Fields ◽  
Single Neurones

scholarly journals The cortical column: a structure without a function

2005 ◽  
Vol 360 (1456) ◽  
pp. 837-862 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan C Horton ◽  
Daniel L Adams
Keyword(s):  
Receptive Field ◽  
Striate Cortex ◽  
Ocular Dominance ◽  
50Th Anniversary ◽  
Cortical Column ◽  
Cortical Function ◽  
Ocular Dominance Columns ◽  
Cortical Areas ◽  
Architectural Feature ◽  
Joint Receptors

This year, the field of neuroscience celebrates the 50th anniversary of Mountcastle's discovery of the cortical column. In this review, we summarize half a century of research and come to the disappointing realization that the column may have no function. Originally, it was described as a discrete structure, spanning the layers of the somatosensory cortex, which contains cells responsive to only a single modality, such as deep joint receptors or cutaneous receptors. Subsequently, examples of columns have been uncovered in numerous cortical areas, expanding the original concept to embrace a variety of different structures and principles. A ‘column’ now refers to cells in any vertical cluster that share the same tuning for any given receptive field attribute. In striate cortex, for example, cells with the same eye preference are grouped into ocular dominance columns. Unaccountably, ocular dominance columns are present in some species, but not others. In principle, it should be possible to determine their function by searching for species differences in visual performance that correlate with their presence or absence. Unfortunately, this approach has been to no avail; no visual faculty has emerged that appears to require ocular dominance columns. Moreover, recent evidence has shown that the expression of ocular dominance columns can be highly variable among members of the same species, or even in different portions of the visual cortex in the same individual. These observations deal a fatal blow to the idea that ocular dominance columns serve a purpose. More broadly, the term ‘column’ also denotes the periodic termination of anatomical projections within or between cortical areas. In many instances, periodic projections have a consistent relationship with some architectural feature, such as the cytochrome oxidase patches in V1 or the stripes in V2. These tissue compartments appear to divide cells with different receptive field properties into distinct processing streams. However, it is unclear what advantage, if any, is conveyed by this form of columnar segregation. Although the column is an attractive concept, it has failed as a unifying principle for understanding cortical function. Unravelling the organization of the cerebral cortex will require a painstaking description of the circuits, projections and response properties peculiar to cells in each of its various areas.

scholarly journals The influence of stimulus velocity on the responses of single neurones in the striate cortex.

1978 ◽  
Vol 277 (1) ◽  
pp. 467-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
A W Goodwin ◽  
G H Henry
Keyword(s):  
Striate Cortex ◽  
Stimulus Velocity ◽  
Single Neurones

scholarly journals Receptive fields of single neurones in the cat's striate cortex

1959 ◽  
Vol 148 (3) ◽  
pp. 574-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. H. Hubel ◽  
T. N. Wiesel
Keyword(s):  
Striate Cortex ◽  
Receptive Fields ◽  
Single Neurones

Historical Introduction

1977 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 2-5
Author(s):  
R. D. Heidenreich
Keyword(s):  
Electron Emission ◽  
Secondary Electron ◽  
Secondary Electron Emission ◽  
50Th Anniversary ◽  
Secondary Emission ◽  
Wave Nature ◽  
Nobel Prize In Physics ◽  
Primary Electrons ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Mutual Agreement

This program has been organized by the EMSA to commensurate the 50th anniversary of the experimental verification of the wave nature of the electron. Davisson and Germer in the U.S. and Thomson and Reid in Britian accomplished this at about the same time. Their findings were published in Nature in 1927 by mutual agreement since their independent efforts had led to the same conclusion at about the same time. In 1937 Davisson and Thomson shared the Nobel Prize in physics for demonstrating the wave nature of the electron deduced in 1924 by Louis de Broglie.The Davisson experiments (1921-1927) were concerned with the angular distribution of secondary electron emission from nickel surfaces produced by 150 volt primary electrons. The motivation was the effect of secondary emission on the characteristics of vacuum tubes but significant deviations from the results expected for a corpuscular electron led to a diffraction interpretation suggested by Elasser in 1925.

The mensuration of interfaces

1992 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 216-217
Author(s):  
W.M. Stobbs
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
50Th Anniversary ◽  
Numerical Data ◽  
Industrial Applications ◽  
Dynamical Theory ◽  
Large Strains ◽  
Reasonable Approach ◽  
Lattice Resolution ◽  
Analogue To Digital ◽  
The Way

I do not have access to the abstracts of the first meeting of EMSA but at this, the 50th Anniversary meeting of the Electron Microscopy Society of America, I have an excuse to consider the historical origins of the approaches we take to the use of electron microscopy for the characterisation of materials. I have myself been actively involved in the use of TEM for the characterisation of heterogeneities for little more than half of that period. My own view is that it was between the 3rd International Meeting at London, and the 1956 Stockholm meeting, the first of the European series , that the foundations of the approaches we now take to the characterisation of a material using the TEM were laid down. (This was 10 years before I took dynamical theory to be etched in stone.) It was at the 1956 meeting that Menter showed lattice resolution images of sodium faujasite and Hirsch, Home and Whelan showed images of dislocations in the XlVth session on “metallography and other industrial applications”. I have always incidentally been delighted by the way the latter authors misinterpreted astonishingly clear thickness fringes in a beaten (”) foil of Al as being contrast due to “large strains”, an error which they corrected with admirable rapidity as the theory developed. At the London meeting the research described covered a broad range of approaches, including many that are only now being rediscovered as worth further effort: however such is the power of “the image” to persuade that the above two papers set trends which influence, perhaps too strongly, the approaches we take now. Menter was clear that the way the planes in his image tended to be curved was associated with the imaging conditions rather than with lattice strains, and yet it now seems to be common practice to assume that the dots in an “atomic resolution image” can faithfully represent the variations in atomic spacing at a localised defect. Even when the more reasonable approach is taken of matching the image details with a computed simulation for an assumed model, the non-uniqueness of the interpreted fit seems to be rather rarely appreciated. Hirsch et al., on the other hand, made a point of using their images to get numerical data on characteristics of the specimen they examined, such as its dislocation density, which would not be expected to be influenced by uncertainties in the contrast. Nonetheless the trends were set with microscope manufacturers producing higher and higher resolution microscopes, while the blind faith of the users in the image produced as being a near directly interpretable representation of reality seems to have increased rather than been generally questioned. But if we want to test structural models we need numbers and it is the analogue to digital conversion of the information in the image which is required.

Happy 50th Anniversary OA!

2010 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
50Th Anniversary
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