3 ms·

I have a PhD in visual neuroscience, so yeah, I’m pretty comfortable saying we don’t know how it works. We know a lot of facts, and we have some ideas about ho

I have a PhD in visual neuroscience, so yeah, I’m pretty comfortable saying we don’t know how it works. We know a lot of facts, and we have some ideas about how various small things are implemented, but in terms of grand unifying theories, we’re nowhere close. For example, suppose I showed you two gratings (think zebra stripes): a small patch and a larger one. Under some circumstances, you’ll have a harder time determining which way the big patch is oriented vs. the small one. This is true even though there’s extra information in the big patch. We think this is related to a phenomena called surround suppression, but they’re not exactly the same....and no one can agree on how surround suppression is implemented, let alone what it’s good for. This happens in primary visual cortex, which is probably the simplest—-and most extensively studied—of the visual cortical areas.

0-_-0 8y ago
It's quite unrelated, but I've been wondering something about neuroscience grammar: Why is it "in primary visual cortex" and not "in _the_ primary visual cortex"?
- primo44 8y ago
  And just regular grammar. "Phenomena" is plural.
  - mattkrause 8y ago
    Got nothing for that one :-)
- mattkrause 8y ago
  I'm not sure! Your innocuous question has kicked off a pretty feisty debate on my floor about whether it is 'primary' as in first (either in the circuit or evolutionarily) or primary as in most important. If it's the former, adding a "the" seems to add some unwarranted emphasis. I think there's probably some parallelism too. Primary visual cortex is also called "V1" (as in the first cortical area involved in vision) or "Area 17" (according to a map that defines areas based on their cellular organization). While "in the primary visual cortex" sounds fine, "in the V1" and "in the Area 17" sound barbarous.

0-_-0 8y ago

It's quite unrelated, but I've been wondering something about neuroscience grammar: Why is it "in primary visual cortex" and not "in _the_ primary visual cortex"?

primo44 8y ago
And just regular grammar. "Phenomena" is plural.
- mattkrause 8y ago
  Got nothing for that one :-)
mattkrause 8y ago
I'm not sure! Your innocuous question has kicked off a pretty feisty debate on my floor about whether it is 'primary' as in first (either in the circuit or evolutionarily) or primary as in most important. If it's the former, adding a "the" seems to add some unwarranted emphasis. I think there's probably some parallelism too. Primary visual cortex is also called "V1" (as in the first cortical area involved in vision) or "Area 17" (according to a map that defines areas based on their cellular organization). While "in the primary visual cortex" sounds fine, "in the V1" and "in the Area 17" sound barbarous.