Connectionists: Evidence for single-cell abstractions in the brain

[Asim Roy]

I am not an expert on single cell recordings, how they are done, etc. But there is a long history of single cell recordings. And some of those studies led to Nobel prizes. Here's a list of some from Wikipedia: Single-unit recording - Wikipedia<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-unit_recording>


  *   1928: One of the earliest accounts of being able to record from the nervous system was by Edgar Adrian<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Adrian> in his 1928 publication "The Basis of Sensation". In this, he describes his recordings of electrical discharges in single nerve fibers using a Lippmann electrometer<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lippmann_electrometer>. He won the Nobel Prize in 1932 for his work revealing the function of neurons.[11]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-unit_recording#cite_note-11>
  *   1957: John Eccles<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carew_Eccles> used intracellular single-unit recording to study synaptic mechanisms in motoneurons (for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1963).
  *   1959: Studies by David H. Hubel<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Hubel> and Torsten Wiesel<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torsten_Wiesel>. They used single neuron recordings to map the visual cortex in unanesthesized, unrestrained cats using tungsten electrodes. This work won them the Nobel Prize in 1981 for information processing in the visual system.
  *   Moser and O'Keefe Nobel prize (grid and place cells): The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - Press release<https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2014/press-release/>

So you are questioning some ground-breaking work in this area. I had contact with Horace Barlow, of Cambridge University and also the great grandson of Darwin, who passed away last year. He came to visit me in Phoenix in 2012 after a private argument with Walter Freeman, Christof Koch and probably 20 to 25 other people on the concept cell findings by Koch's team at Caltech. Barlow is also one of the pioneers of neuroscience and in single cell recordings:
*         Barlow H. B. (1972). "Single units and sensation: A neuron doctrine for perceptual psychology?". Perception. 1 (4): 371-394. doi<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doi_(identifier)>:10.1068/p010371<https://doi.org/10.1068%2Fp010371>. PMID<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PMID_(identifier)> 4377168<https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4377168>. S2CID<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S2CID_(identifier)> 17487970<https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:17487970>.

I will leave it at that.

All the best,
Asim Roy
Professor, Information Systems
Arizona State University
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From: Connectionists <connectionists-bounces at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu> On Behalf Of Rothganger, Fredrick
Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2022 4:27 AM
To: connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu
Subject: Connectionists: Evidence for single-cell abstractions in the brain

Asim wrote: "It's important to understand that there is plenty of neurophysiological evidence for abstractions at the single cell level in the brain."

We should be cautious about how we interpret electrophysiological data. They are extremely sparse readings taken at random locations in a complex circuit. That some subset of them correlate with certain stimuli does not necessarily make them a representation of those stimuli. See https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055624.full.pdf<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055624.full.pdf__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!YMM9p0iNH0rRMjQog4wD9rAk-_YGtmnWUHaIzdYvhON1FqN7R3dgsI6Y4KYECJy-DigrDUdSgaXyTeKJpQ$>

(This comment does not represent an opinion about the larger discussion in which Asim's statement was made.)
Could a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor? - bioRxiv<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055624.full.pdf__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!YMM9p0iNH0rRMjQog4wD9rAk-_YGtmnWUHaIzdYvhON1FqN7R3dgsI6Y4KYECJy-DigrDUdSgaXyTeKJpQ$>
Could a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor? Figure 1: Example behaviors. We use three classical video games as example behaviors for our model organism - (A) Don-key Kong (1981), (B) Space Invaders (1978), and (C) Pitfall(1981).
www.biorxiv.org<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.biorxiv.org__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!YMM9p0iNH0rRMjQog4wD9rAk-_YGtmnWUHaIzdYvhON1FqN7R3dgsI6Y4KYECJy-DigrDUdSgaUq9P7G4Q$>

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