I have a vague recollection of references to yellow Volkswagen detectors, too.
Mike didn't just make this up. Here are some citations I pulled from Google Scholar. What is the computational goal of the neocortex HB Barlow - Large-scale neuronal theories of the brain. MIT Press, ..., 1994 - books.google.com ... seems to be directly connected with vision (Van Essen ... that time-these ideas from psychology fit the ... Volkswagen (V) units, but no Yellow Volkswagen (YV) units ... Barlow attributes this to Harris (1980) The following includes a section about "yellow Volkswagen detectors" Insight or out of sight? Two examples of perceptual plasticity in the human adult CS Harris - Visual coding and adaptability, 1980 - books.google.com ... is news too-maybe even more so than plasticity in vision, since so many ... Early neurophysiological studies of such" feature detectors" in animals promised to ... Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. Director, Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Associate Professor, Psychology University of West Florida Pensacola, FL 32514 - 5751 Phone: (850) 857-6355 or 473-7435 e-mail: [email protected] CUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/ Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 8:22 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Thinking Critically About Neuroscience: From Molecules to Full Brain Circuit Maps Mike Palij, with a talent for the obscure referent, paused in the course of a discussion to note: > (the problem is similar to that for the classic "grandmother" or > "yellow volkswagen" account of pattern recognition). Now I believe I am familiar with the "grandmother" allusion. It refers to a concept which emerged from the Hubel-Weisel recording studies of neurons in the visual cortex of the cat. Later studies by others showed that neurons in a neighbouring region of the brain (the inferotemporal cortex?) were highly specific (fired only) to complex visual stimuli. The suggestion was made that in our cortex there may exist neurons which are so specifically tuned as to respond only to the stimulus of our grandmother's face. So the full allusion would be to a "grandmother cell" (and I probably could even find out who first said it if I really wanted to). But yellow volkswagen? You've got me there. Are you sure you didn't mean "yellow submarine?" Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [email protected] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
