Brain and Visual Perception: The Story of a 25-Year Collaboration

ISBN-13: 9780195176186 / Angielski / Twarda / 2004 / 744 str.

David H. Hubel; Torsten Wiesel

Opis

Scientists' understanding of two central problems in neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy has been greatly influenced by the work of David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel: (1) What is it to see? This relates to the machinery that underlies visual perception. (2) How do we acquire the brain's mechanisms for vision? This is the nature-nurture question as to whether the nerve connections responsible for vision are innate or whether they develop through experience in the early life of an animal or human. This is a book about the collaboration between Hubel and Wiesel, which began in 1958, lasted until about 1982, and led to a Nobel Prize in 1981. It opens with short autobiographies of both men, describes the state of the field when they started, and tells about the beginnings of their collaboration. It emphasizes the importance of various mentors in their lives, especially Stephen W. Kuffler, who opened up the field by studying the cat retina in 1950, and founded the department of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, where most of their work was done. The main part of the book consists of Hubel and Wiesel's most important publications. Each reprinted paper is preceded by a foreword that tells how they went about the research, what the difficulties and the pleasures were, and whether they felt a paper was important and why. Each is also followed by an afterword describing how the paper was received and what developments have occurred since its publication. The reader learns things that are often absent from typical scientific publications, including whether the work was difficult, fun, personally rewarding, exhilarating, or just plain tedious. The book ends with a summing-up of the authors' view of the present state of the field. This is much more than a collection of reprinted papers. Above all it tells the story of an unusual scientific collaboration that was hugely enjoyable and served to transform an entire branch of neurobiology. It will appeal to neuroscientists, vision scientists, biologists, psychologists, physicists, historians of science, and to their students and trainees, at all levels from high school on, as well as anyone else who is interested in the scientific process.

Recenzje

Beginning around 1960, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel took the study of the brain and its development from the realm of philosophy to biology. These papers and the commentaries that accompany them put the reader inside the heads of the scientists who gave us our modern understanding of the cerebral cortex, often by asking the next logical question, but always with appreciation for the beauty of the system.

O autorze

David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel were both awarded the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Torsten Wiesel is the Secretary General of the Human Frontier Science Program and President of the International Brain Research Organization.