Message-Id: <199809091046.GAA22921@camel14.mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 06:50:36 -0500
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
From: bbenzon@mindspring.com (Bill Benzon)
Subject: Re: Nothing succeeds like success
At 10:37 AM 9/9/98 +0200, Mario Vaneechoutte wrote:
>
>2. Book review of
>Brain, Vision, Memory: tales in the history of neuroscience. C.G. Gross,
>1998. MIT Press.
>in Nature 394: 143 by J.C. Marshall (1998):
>'A busy experimental neuroscientist, Gross first came to fame as the
>discoverer of cells in the macaque's infero-temporal cortex that respond
>selectively to the image of a monkey's hand - not quite 'grandmother cells'
>(which would respond only to the face of one's grandmother), but close
>enough.' Actually true grandmother cells, which Derek disclaims to exist.
I haven't read this book, but in correspondence with Gross some years ago
he indicated that he'd never discovered any more such cells. Maybe things
have changed since then, but I think the evidence for grandmother cells is
quite weak. The evidence seems to indicate that recognition is spread over
an ensemble of cells and that any given cell can contribute to the
recognition of many objects/states.
William L. Benzon 201.217.1010
708 Jersey Ave. Apt. 2A bbenzon@mindspring.com
Jersey City, NJ 07302 USA http://www.newsavanna.com/wlb/
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