|
Jerome Ysroael Lettvin (February 23, 1920 – April 23, 2011), often known as Jerry Lettvin, was an American cognitive scientist, and Professor of Electrical and Bioengineering and Communications Physiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is best known as the lead author of the paper, "What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain" (1959),〔Lettvin, J.Y; Maturana, H.R.; McCulloch, W.S.; Pitts, W.H., (What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain ), ''Proceedings of the IRE'', Vol. 47, No. 11, November 1959〕 one of the most cited papers in the Science Citation Index. He wrote it along with Humberto Maturana, Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts, and in the paper they gave special thanks and mention to Oliver Selfridge at MIT.〔"We are particularly grateful to O. G. Selfridge, whose experiments with mechanical recognizers of pattern helped drive us to this work and whose criticism in part shaped its course."〕 Lettvin carried out neurophysiological studies in the spinal cord, made the first demonstration of "feature detectors" in the visual system, and studied information processing in the terminal branches of single axons. Around 1969, he originated the term "grandmother cell"〔Gross, Charles G., (Genealogy of the "Grandmother Cell" ), NEUROSCIENTIST 8(5):512–518, 2002. 〕 to illustrate the logical inconsistency of the concept. Lettvin was also the author of many published articles on subjects varying from neurology and physiology to philosophy and politics.〔(Jerome Lettvin page )〕 Among his many activities at MIT, he served as one of the first directors of the Concourse Program, and, along with his wife Maggie, was a houseparent of the Bexley dorm. ==Early life== Lettvin was born February 23, 1920 in Chicago, the eldest of four children (including the pianist Theodore Lettvin) of Solomon and Fanny Lettvin. After training as a neurologist and psychiatrist at the University of Illinois (BS, MD 1943), he practiced medicine during the Battle of the Bulge.〔Squire, Larry R., (''The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography'', Volume 2 ), Society for Neuroscience, 1998. Cf. pp. 223-243 on Jerome Lettvin.〕 After the war, he continued practicing neurology and researching nervous systems, partly at Boston City Hospital, and then at MIT with Walter Pitts and Warren McCulloch under Norbert Wiener. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jerome Lettvin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|