Leo M. Chalupa – The Visual Neurosciences (2 Volume set)

Автор: Leo M. Chalupa
Название книги: The Visual Neurosciences
Формат: PDF
Жанр: Медицина
Страницы: 1813
Качество: Изначально компьютерное, E-book

Visual science is the model system for neuroscience, its findings relevant to all other areas. This massive collection of papers by leading researchers in the field will become an essential reference for researchers and students in visual neuroscience, and will be of importance to researchers and professionals in other disciplines, including molecular and cellular biology, cognitive science, ophthalmology, psychology, computer science, optometry, and education.Over 100 chapters cover the entire field of visual neuroscience, from its historical foundations to the latest research and findings in molecular mechanisms and network modeling. The book is organized by topic–different sections cover such subjects as the history of vision science; developmental processes; retinal mechanisms and processes; organization of visual pathways; subcortical processing; processing in the primary visual cortex; detection and sampling; brightness and color; form, shape,and object recognition; motion, depth, and spatial relationships; eye movements; attention and cognition; and theoretical and computational perspectives. The list of contributors includes leading international researchers in visual science.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about vision is the utter simplicity of the act of seeing.
We open our eyes and a three-dimensional panorama of colored images—some stationary,
others in motion—unfolds before us. In most cases, the brain makes sense of this information
seemingly instantaneously, allowing us to function reasonably well under a wide
range of lighting conditions. The retinal image is constantly changing as we move about
and yet the objects around us are perceived as stable. This seemingly effortless nature of
sight beguiles the profound complexity of the processes underlying the perception of even
the simplest visual stimulus. Indeed, no machine can currently perform the myriad visual
recognition tasks we normally take for granted, and it is still unclear whether such technology
will become available in the foreseeable future.
Vision is the dominant sense in humans and other primates, with nearly 30% of our
cortical surface representing information that is predominantly visual. Reflecting the
importance of vision to the formation of human experience, more effort has gone into
studying the visual system than any other sensory modality. As a consequence, we have
accumulated an impressive amount of information about vision at many different levels,
ranging from genes and molecules to theoretical computations. Our long-term objective
is to explain how the brain transforms the spatiotemporal patterns defined by the photons
impinging on the retina at any given moment into a coherent visual world. The information
derived from understanding these basic processes will ultimately help us prevent and
treat the many disorders that impair our ability to see.
Almost 10% of people living today suffer from a visual disorder stemming from a defect
of the retina or the visual centers of the brain. Effective treatment of these visual impairments
is possible in only a few types of cases because we lack the basic knowledge to understand
the dysfunction underlying these disorders. Although we have made significant
progress in the visual neurosciences, much remains to be done. The scope of the overall
effort has intensified in recent years, reflecting in part, the advent of new technologies,
ranging from those of modern molecular biology to the functional imaging of the human
brain. Such methodologies have now made it possible to pursue a host of previously unanswerable
questions.
There is a plethora of professional journals devoted to vision research, and a number
of excellent books dealing with perception as well as the neural bases of vision. No single
source, however, has attempted to provide a comprehensive and authoritative account of
the visual neurosciences. In an attempt to remedy this situation, we invited 100 of the
world’s leading researchers in this field to summarize their area of specialization in a
manner understandable to the nonspecialist. The response by our colleagues was
immensely gratifying. Virtually everyone invited agreed to participate, and some suggested
the inclusion of additional chapters, so the final number of contributions was increased to
114.
Each chapter was reviewed by other experts, and authors made revisions based on their
feedback. As editors we strove to preserve the individual “voice” of each author, and we
also agreed to tolerate a certain degree of redundancy across chapters, provided they
offered valuable insights into the topic under consideration. The Visual Neurosciences is a work
in progress so some disagreement was expected among authors regarding specific issues.
We made little attempt to broker a compromise between dissimilar viewpoints held by different
authors, as long as these were supported by empirical evidence. Controversy is what
often makes science fun, and we leave it for future generations to decide the relative merits
of currently held positions.
The Visual Neurosciences begins with two historical chapters and an appraisal of the
prospects for single-unit approaches in neurobiology. They are followed by Chapters 3–15
on Developmental Processes. This section, as in the book as whole, is organized from molecules
to pathways to systems. The section on Retinal Mechanisms and Processes (Chapters
16–29) presents the current state of knowledge on phototransduction, retinal synapses,
and physiology, with authors explaining how these mechanisms ostensibly optimize the
processing of visual information. These chapters set the stage for the next section on the
Organization of Visual Pathways (Chapters 30–34) and the subsequent elaboration of projections
for Subcortical Processing (Chapters 35–40) and for Processing in Primary Visual
Cortex (Chapters 41–49). Most of the chapters in these first six sections provide an anatomical
and physiological context for understanding the psychophysical, perceptual, and
neurophysiological chapters that follow in the next four sections, beginning with Detection
and Sampling (Chapters 50–55) and proceeding to higher-level processing of Brightness
and Color (Chapters 56–67), Form, Shape, and Object Recognition (Chapters 68–79), and
Motion, Depth, and Spatial Relations (Chapters 80–89). These chapters illustrate how 20th
Century neuroscience unraveled many phenomenological conundrums of the 19th
Century. Of course, 20th Century psychology raised still other challenges for neuroscience,
including the role of nonsensory variables in perception and cognition. Sections on Eye
Movements (Chapters 90–99) and Attention and Cognition (Chapters 100–104) address
these questions with detailed accounts of the coordination of eye position and information
processing by subcortical and cortical circuits underlying cognitive phenomena. The
final section, Theoretical and Computational Perspectives (Chapters 105–114), provides
an integration of ideas from neuroscience, psychology, and computer science that are likely
to guide future discoveries in the visual neurosciences.
For an undertaking of this scope, the entire project went remarkably smoothly. For this
we thank all of the authors for adhering good-naturedly (in most cases) to the rather tight
schedule. We also thank the countless anonymous reviewers, members of the Editorial
Advisory Board for their input at all stages of this undertaking, and Barbara Murphy,
our editor at the MIT Press, for her support and keen professional advice. It is our hope
that The Visual Neurosciences will serve to motivate and inspire the next generation of
researchers, whether they are currently beginning students, clinical practitioners, or established
researchers in other fields of endeavor.
Leo M. Chalupa and John S. Werner