Turtle visual cortex is non-retinotopic
blog.jordan.matelsky.com
Turtle visual cortex is non-retinotopic
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: Turtle visual cortex is non-retinotopic
#2My experience with turtles is confined to reef diving.
Turtles are unusual in that they are extremely tolerant of hypoxia. It may be that they have adapted to a relatively shallow network that doesn't parse much, but is pretty good at extracting the most meaningful features (oxygen/energy efficiency favored over information efficiency)
I wonder if this patterns persists for other reptiles.
Re: Turtle visual cortex is non-retinotopic
#3This is fascinating!
Re: Turtle visual cortex is non-retinotopic
#4This is fascinating!
It is fascinating. But I always get uncomfortable reading stuff like this... I mean, they are placing sensors in a turtle’s brain, physically immobilizing it, aiming its head at a screen for a while, and you generally don’t release something to the wild after that. The ethical thing is considered to be killing it.
I get that there are a lot of aspects to modern life that sterilize the gruesomeness of reality. Still makes me uncomfortable when the illusion is peeled back and I catch a glimpse.
Re: Turtle visual cortex is non-retinotopic
#5This is fascinating!
It is fascinating. But I always get uncomfortable reading stuff like this... I mean, they are placing sensors in a turtle’s brain, physically immobilizing it, aiming its head at a screen for a while, and you generally don’t release something to the wild after that. The ethical thing is considered to be killing it. I get that there are a lot of aspects to modern life that sterilize the gruesomeness of reality. Still m…
Agreed. To put into another context if someone were to try this on my Boxer dog , an arguably similar entity, I would protect her with my life if need be. Given that while I am fascinated with such information I will have to come down on the side of the turtle.
Re: Turtle visual cortex is non-retinotopic
#6This topic reminds me of Walter Pitts and specifically his famous paper "What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain" (1959): https://hearingbrain.org/docs/letvin_ieee_1959.pdf
Pitts is probably known to HN readership for his early work on neural networks which put him in dialogue with people like Claude Shannon. It's fascinating to see how much that early world of 1940s/50s era computer researchers overlapped with people literally cutting into animal brains (not to mention experimenting on their own via psychedelics and the like).
Re: Turtle visual cortex is non-retinotopic
#7My experience with turtles is confined to reef diving. Turtles are unusual in that they are extremely tolerant of hypoxia. It may be that they have adapted to a relatively shallow network that doesn't parse much, but is pretty good at extracting the most meaningful features (oxygen/energy efficiency favored over information efficiency) I wonder if this patterns persists for other reptiles.
I think it's unrelated. You could say dolphins and whales are "tolerant of hypoxia", yet from their behavior and the layout of their brains it is evident that evolution has not limited "information efficiency" in exchange for "tolerance to hypoxia".
Re: Turtle visual cortex is non-retinotopic
#8This topic reminds me of Walter Pitts and specifically his famous paper "What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain" (1959): https://hearingbrain.org/docs/letvin_ieee_1959.pdf Pitts is probably known to HN readership for his early work on neural networks which put him in dialogue with people like Claude Shannon. It's fascinating to see how much that early world of 1940s/50s era computer researchers overlapped with pe…
Interesting: I always think of it as the Letvin paper! Warren McCulloch is on it too. Quite the list of authors!
Re: Turtle visual cortex is non-retinotopic
#9This is fascinating!
It is fascinating. But I always get uncomfortable reading stuff like this... I mean, they are placing sensors in a turtle’s brain, physically immobilizing it, aiming its head at a screen for a while, and you generally don’t release something to the wild after that. The ethical thing is considered to be killing it. I get that there are a lot of aspects to modern life that sterilize the gruesomeness of reality. Still m…
I feel you. I made the mistake of looking up a paper on vision in cats once. Once was enough.
Re: Turtle visual cortex is non-retinotopic
#10Colleague of mine was working on research of vision system of a spitting fish. The fish hunts by spitting water at insects sitting on the leaves above the water surface. What they found out that "firing solution" is formed in the retina and passed to the brain to initiate the spit.