Abstract
The history of neuroscience, like that of all of biology, has been a process of relating structure and function. Three major periods in neuroscience can be characterized by attempts to pitch this relationship at various levels in the nervous system. In the mid-nineteenth century, a series of neurological observations showed that particular functions — notably, the ability to understand and generate speech — appear to be localized to specific regions of the cerebral cortex. Around the turn of the century, the discrete nature of neurons as cells was recognized, and initial discoveries were made about the synaptic connections between them. Finally, in the last quarter-century has come the discovery of the cortical column: a modular structure repeated throughout much of the cortex that is thought to serve as an input/output unit, and in which all cells share at least some functional properties, (e.g., receptive fields).
This work was supported by a grant from the International Business Machines Corporation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Barlow, H. B. (1982). What causes trichromacy — a theoretical analysis using comb-filtered spectra. Vision Research, 22, 635–643.
Bernstein, N.A. (1967). The coordination and regulation of movement. London: Pergamon Press.
Bongard, M. M. (1970). Pattern recognition. New York: Spartan Books.
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P.J. (1985). Culture and the evolutionary process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Buchsbaum, G., & Gottschalk, A. (1983). Trichromacy, opponent colors coding, and optimum color information transmission in the retina. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences (London), 220, 89–113.
Cerella, J. (1979). Visual classes and natural categories in the pigeon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance (Washington), 5, 68— 77.
Changeux, J. P., & Danchin, A. (1976). Selective stabilization of developing synapses as a mechanism for the specification of neuronal networks. Nature, 264, 705 — 711.
Crick, F. (1984). Memory and molecular turnover. Nature, 312, 101.
Eccles, J. C. (1984). The cerebral neocortex: a theory of its operation. In E. G. Jones, & A. Peters (Eds.), Cerebral cortex (vol. 2, pp. 1— 38 ). New York: Plenum.
Edelman, G.M. (1975). The shock of molecular recognition. In E. E. Smith (Ed.), Molecular approaches to immunology. New York: Academic.
Edelman, G. M. (1978). Group selection and phasic reentrant signalling: a theory of higher brain function. In G. M. Edelman, & V. B. Mountcastle (Eds.), The mindful brain: cortical organization and the group-selective theory of higher brain function (pp. 55 —100). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Edelman, G.M. (1981). Group selection as the basis for higher brain function. In F. O. Schmitt, F. G. Worden, G. Adelman, & S. G. Dennis (Eds.), Organization of the cerebral cortex (pp. 535 — 563 ). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Edelman, G.M. (1983). Cell adhesion molecules. Science, 219, 450–57.
Edelman, G. M. (1984 a). Modulation of cell adhesion during induction, histogenesis, and perinatal development of the nervous system. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 7,339 —377.
Edelman, G. M. (1984 b). Cell adhesion and morphogenesis: the regulator hypothesis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 81, 1460–1464.
Edelman, G. M. (1985). Cell adhesion and the molecular processes of morphogenesis. Annual Review of Biochemistry, 54, 135 —169.
Edelman, G.M., & Finkel, L.H. (1984). Neuronal group selection in the cerebral cortex. In G. M. Edelman, W. E. Gall, & W. M. Cowan (Eds.), Dynamic aspects of neocortical function (pp. 653–695 ). New York: Wiley.
Edelman, G. M., & Reeke, G. N. Jr. (1982). Selective networks capable of representative transformations, limited generalizations, and associative memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 79, 2091–2095.
Finkel, L. H., & Edelman, G.M. (1985). Interaction of synaptic modification rules within populations of neurons. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 82, 1291–1295.
Hebb, D. O. (1949). The organization of behavior. New York: Wiley.
Herrnstein, R. J. (1982). Stimuli and the texture of experience. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 6105–117.
Hopfield, J. J. (1982). Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective computational abilities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 79, 2554–2558.
Julesz, B. (1981). Textons, the elements of texture perception and their interactions. Nature, 290, 91–97.
Kaas, J. H., Merzenich, M. M., & Killackey, H. P. (1983). The reorganization of somatosensory cortex following peripheral-nerve damage in adult and developing mammals. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 6, 325–356.
Kramer, A. P., Golden, J. R., & Stent, G. S. (1985). Developmental arborization of sensory neurons in the leech Haementeria ghilani, 1. Origins of natural variations in the branching pattern. Journal of Neuroscience, 5, 759–767.
Liberman, A.M. (1982). On finding that speech is special. American Psychologist, 37, 148–167.
Lisman, J. E. (1985). A mechanism for memory storage insensitive to molecular turnover–a bistable autophosphorylating kinase. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 82, 3055–3057.
Lumsden, C. J. (1983). Neuronal group selection and the evolution of hominid cranial capacity. Journal of Human Evolution, 12, 169–184.
Lynch, G. S., & Baudry, M. (1984). The biochemistry of memory: a new and specific hypothesis. Science, 224, 1057–1063.
Macagno, E. R., Lopresti, V., & Levinthal, C. (1973). Structure and development of neuronal connections in isogenic organisms: variations and similarities in the optic system of Daphnia magna. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 70, 57–61.
May, R. M., & MacArthur, R. H. (1972). Niche overlap as a function of environmental variability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 69, 1109–1113.
Mayr, E. (1982). The growth of biological thought: diversity, evolution, and inheritance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Mountcastle, V. B. (1978). An organizing principle for cerebral function: the unit module and the distributed system. In G. M. Edelman & V.B. Mountcastle, (Eds.), The mindful brain: cortical organization and the group-selective theory of higher brain function (pp. 7–50 ). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Pearson, K. G., & Goodman, C. S. (1979). Correlation of variability in structure with variability in synaptic connections of an identified interneuron in locusts. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 184, 141–165.
Reeke, G. N., & Edelman, G.M. (1984). Selective networks and recognition automata. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 426, 181–201.
Rockel, A. J., Hiorns, R.W., & Powell, T. P. S. (1980). The basic uniformity in structure of the neocortex. Brain, 103, 221–244.
Ryle, G. (1951). The concept of mind. London: Hutchinson.
Sober, E. (1984). The nature of selection. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Spemann, H. (1938). Embryonic development and induction. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Szentagothai, J. (1978). The neuron network of the cerebral cortex: a functional interpretation. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 201, 219 —248.
Treisman, A., & Gelade, G. (1980). A feature-integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology, 1297–136.
von Holst, E. (1973). The behavioral physiology of animal and man: the collected papers of Erich von Holst. London: Methuen.
Weiss, P. (1939). Principles of development. New York: Henry Holt.
Wittgenstein, L. (1968). Philosophical investigations (3rd ed.). Oxford: Blackewell.
Young, T. Z. (1979). Learning as a process of selection and amplification. J. Roy. Soc. Med. (Lond.) 72, 801— 814.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1988 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Finkel, L.H. (1988). Neuronal Group Selection: A Basis for Categorization by the Nervous System. In: de Kerckhove, D., Lumsden, C.J. (eds) The Alphabet and the Brain. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-01093-8_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-01093-8_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-01095-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-01093-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive