Human Senses and Actions
From Lettvin
Human senses and actions appear to outperform robotic senses and actions. The range and discrimination of senses seem higher and the energy consumed by motor units seems lower.
This focus of this summary is on visual processing. However, just as in humans, visual processing has no value outside the context of actuation. A photograph merely defers actuation until it is observed.
Eyes work over an enormous 10 decades (orders of magnitude) of illumination. They see a boundary unchanged by light intensity, and object colors unchanged by varying light color. They discriminate details well below the size of their retinal pixel size. They appear to predict what will be seen before perception occurs. No available devices have these properties. No literature yet supports the development of such devices.
Other senses, whether in those of organisms as complex as humans or as simple as the single-celled stentor, display similar excellent properties.
Underlying the senses, and connecting them with motor and secretion units, is the nervous system and brain. Every part of the nervous system appears to have profound local processing ability. Under certain circumstances, a spinal cord, despite being detached from the animal's brain, appears to be able to maintain and operate an animal's life functions. The story of the "chicken with its head cut off" is real. One was exhibited on tour for over a year and a half many decades ago.
The brain and spinal cord contain a great deal of structure. The shapes of these structures has been known since the late 1890s, not with precision, but generally recognizable.
Nobel laureate Santiago Ramón y Cajal, in his preface to the Spanish edition of "Histology of the Nervous System," wrote: "Practitioners will only be able to claim that a valid explanation of a histological observation has been provided if three questions can be answered satisfactorily:
- what is the functional role of the arrangement in the animal;
- what mechanisms underlie this function;
- and what sequence of chemical and mechanical events during evolution and development gave rise to these mechanisms?"
In seeking these answers, I have come across some curious mathematical transforms. Implementation of these transforms in devices is feasible and will give the devices unprecedented capabilities. Devices with these capabilities are the subjects of my claims.
