Word: wiesel
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...research team since 1959, Hubel and Wiesel have studied the workings of the cerebral cortex's visual region, only a small part of the organ Wiesel terms "the most complicated machine on earth...
...Hubel and Wiesel's knowledge of the way the brain processes information from the eye advances the study of the full cortex--10 billion neurons folded together at the brain's crust that may be the key to man's development over other animals...
...search of what they call the "neural substrate," the two researchers began implanting sensitive electrodes into the brains of anesthetized monkeys. The electrodes monitored individual cell responses from within the visual cortex; in a laborious process, Hubel and Wiesel tested the reaction of specific cells in specific areas of the visual cortex to the specific images placed before a monkey's eyes...
...breakthrough came in what both Hubel and Wiesel say was an accident. The cells of the monkey's visual cortex failed to "recognize" white dots on the screen, but reacted regularly while the researchers were changing slides. "It wasn't the dot at all, but the edge of the glass" on moving slides, Hubel says...
...team took months to convince themselves that edges and lines caused the reactions in the cells. A newspaper or television picture is made up of tiny dots. But Hubel and Wiesel found that the visual cortex breaks objects down, not into dots, but into line segments...