Brain and Visual Perception - The Story of a 25-Year Collaboration - D. Hubel, T. Wiesel (Oxford, 2005) WW

738 Pages·2005·60.49 MB·English

BRAIN AND
VISUAL PERCEPTION

Bevil Conway, "Spots and Bars: David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel" (2004), Hardground etching
and aquatint (edition:75).

I have depicted Hubel and Wiesel in the lab, in the early 1960s, at the pea\ of their exploration of the physiol-
ogy of the early cat visual system. Hubel and Wiesel pulled bacf{ the metaphorical curtain on the blaci^-box that
was the visual system and established a firm foundation for our understanding of visual processing in all mam-
mals including humans. Their discoveries have totally transformed the way in which we understand vision, a
revolution that will have repercussions in all fields of knowledge, not least of which being the practice of art: just
as understanding anatomy revolutionized the way renaissance artists made art, so too will an understanding of
the neural mechanisms of visual processing profoundly affect art making. "This frontispiece is a celebration of
Hubel and Wiesel's achievement and serves as a reminder that science and art are constantly intertwined; in fact
it is precisely at the interface of the two that the most exciting discoveries are made.

BRAIN AND

VISUAL PERCEPTION

The Story of a 25-Year Collaboration

DAVID H. HUBEL

TORSTEN N. WIESEL

OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS

2005

OXPORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS

Oxford
New York
Auckland
Bangkok
Buenos Aires Cape Town
Chennai
Dar es Salaam
Delhi
Hong Kong
Istanbul
Karachi
Kolkata
Kuala Lumpur
Madrid
Melbourne
Mexico City
Mumbai
Nairobi
Sao Paulo
Shanghai
Taipei
Tokyo
Toronto

Copyright © 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
http://www.oup.com

Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hubel, David H.
Brain and visual perception : the story of a 25-year collaboration / David H. Hubel,
Torsten N. Wiesel.
p.; cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-19-517618-9

1. Visual pathways. 2. Visual perception. I. Wiesel, Torsten N. II. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Visual Perception—physiology—United States. 2. Biomedical
Research—history—United States. 3. History of Medicine, 20th Cent.—United States. WW

11 AA1 H877b2005]
QP475.H8152005
152.14—dc22
2004049553

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Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

To our wives and children,

who put up with so much.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION AND BIOGRAPHIES
PARTI

1. David H.Hubel
5

2. Torsten N. Wiesel
25

PART II
BACKGROUND TO OUR RESEARCH

3. Cortical Neurophysiology in the 1950s
37

4. The Group at Hopkins
41

5. The Move from Hopkins to Harvard
48

6. The New Department
53

PART III
NORMAL PHYSIOLOGY AND ANATOMY

7. Our First Paper, on Cat Cortex, 1959
59

8. Recordings from Fibers in the Monkey Optic Nerve
83

9. Recording from Cells in the Cat Lateral Geniculate
91

10. Our Major Paper on Cat Striate Cortex, 1962
104

11. Recordings from Cat Prestriate Areas, 18 and 19
141

12. Survey of the Monkey Lateral Geniculate Body—A Foray into Color
193

13. Recording Fibers in the Cat Corpus Callosum
231

14. Recordings in Monkey Striate Cortex, 1968
244

15. Another Visual Representation, the Cat Clare-Bishop Area
273

16. Encoding of Binocular Depth in a Cortical Area in the Monkey
282

17. Anatomy of the Geniculo-Cortical Pathway: The Nauta Method
286

18. Ocular Dominance Columns Revealed by Autoradiography
317

VII

viii
CONTENTS

19. Regular Sequences of Orientation Shifts in Monkeys
325

20. Cortical Modules and Magnification in Monkeys
354

PART IV
DEPRIVATION AND DEVELOPMENT

21. The First Three Kitten Deprivation Papers
369

22. Second Group of Deprivation Papers
404

23. The Siamese Cat
455

24. Cells Grouped in Orientation Columns in Newborn Monkeys
480

25. Plasticity and Development of Monkey Ocular Dominance Columns
493

PARTV
THREE REVIEWS

26. Ferrier Lecture, 1977
595

27. Nobel Lecture, David H. Hubel

Nobel Lecture, Torsten N. Wiesel
657

28. Epilogue: Summing Up
705

List of Papers Included
711

Glossary
713

Acknowledgments
721

Today, Forty-Six Years After Starting
723

Index
725

PARTI
INTRODUCTION AND
BIOGRAPHIES