I can see that. Apparently I slept through that part of the book and others forget it as soon as they exit class. Isn't that sad? Nightmarish?
Mouse: Yes, but did he answer the fucking question?. You folks got an anatomy lesson and a final tiptoe out of him with that 'pretty standard stuff' bullshit. That's academia- it answers questions with sermons that swallow answers up in its babbling.
It can be impossible to separate a person's answers from his or her worldview. For some, the answer "should" be limited to what kind of tissue is where. It was informative and typical of a certain viewpoint to have Spurious cough up some info without having to look it up. I have no problem with that. But does it go far enough? The question would seem, to me, to be one of whether or not/how much processing takes place in the tissue of the eye itself. That was a hot topic in cog sci a few years back, and scilosopher homed right in on it. Some processing takes place in the eye, so some people consider it an extension of the brain. Other people might argue that the eye takes no role in recall or higher level processing, and is just a sensory organ. Shades of gray (matter). Choose your side and you probably can't be wrong.
I believe this post has two main points. The first is a typically unsimple Yes or No answer to the question of whether White wolf did hear his professor right, i.e. do some scientists use the eyebrain metaphor? The second is for people to cite, name or other wise inform regarding those authors and researchers who use the eyebrain metaphor. Taking this into account everyone’s post has been relevant. I’m sure that the ‘eyebrain’ metaphor gains support from a number of fields, i.e. embryonic studies, but where is the metaphor actually used? I'm taking it that 'eyebrain' is a metaphor though that might not be correct. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I think the "pretty standard stuff" and "textbook level science" comments were uncalled for. Escpecially since developmental biology isn't necessarily a requirement for people who have graduated college. Which means even if it is standard and textbook level many people would have never heard the standard version. In fact it was news to me as I've never taken a class that covered vertebrate eye development and I work on developmental biology. The sad thing is that part of the reason it wasn't covered in my class is the person leading it thinks most developmental stuff done in vertebrates isn't mechanistic enough. So elitism exists in science ... it also exists in pretty much every other profession out there. Just cause young people have more contact with people working in the education field doesn't mean that academics per se should get undue scorn for that fact. As it is extremely difficult to remember all the crap teachers have to teach, and known, and be able to explain it well there is a certain level of extra cover up elitism. This is sad and mainly due to the fact that a lot of people, at least in the states, go through a period when they're growing up where their too stupid to realize that even if adults don't know everything it's still worthwhile to listen too them. So all to often they try to pretend they know everything and throw up jargon based smoke screens. There's ego mixed in too of course, but much of that is brought on by the caustic world of sh*te talking that especially surrounds the youth of America. Whether they have any right to talk shit or not. Sorry I got off topic. My point is half the reason you get that response Gendanken is that you are all too ready to attack ... and not ready enough to put in a little effort and look it up, even though such information is easily available at all good university and public libraries. (I was even more of a dick myself and thankfully my parents wouldn't give me ritalin so I eventually sorted things out the right way)
It is a standard textbook and hence anyone should be able to understand it with some effort. Does it really matter if you actually took a course in it? Textbook level refers to the complexity of the text and that it is not HOT NEW research, but something well known. Same for standard stuff. It could be that nobody never heard of this, but i somehow doubt you never heard about optic vesicles if you studied biology. I first heard about them in a zoology course and not a developmental biology course. You probably just forgot about it because of an information overload. Hence textbook level has nothing to do with supposed to HAVE to know these things. I looked it up to be sure after all. I just remembered where it was and the broad outline of events. Nobody is supposed to have every little detail in his head after all.
Except in a textbook I'm sure there was much more background and contextualization that makes exactly what those things are and why it's relevant to something like the "eye brain metaphor". I think the phraseology you used didn't so much indicate that you hoped anyone should understand it, but that anyone who didn't was in some way substandard. However in my experience a sizeable fraction of stuff people don't understand is due to lack of relevant background knowledge. Not that you necessarily deserved any rants aimed against you, but this is still sciforums right?
Scilosoper: And that was my point. However in my case I know my stuff, somewhat, so it was not in that that I found him insulting. Its not matter of who did not understand on their account- its about the monkey not making himself understandable on his account. Reminds me of that spiteful professor who's repressed an anger of not being competent enough to have been anyting other than a teacher so he makes up for it with eloquence and pomposity. He'll never answer a question becuase he's always forgetting it in his long wind.That's all.
Even I can understand spuriousmonkey post. His account of how the eye develops with the brain is accepted within science, and so ‘standard stuff’, as apposed to pseudoscience. However I don’t think that the concept of the eyebrain was only based on developmental embryology. During the 1970’s ‘At the same time Peter Campus was carefully investigating the characteristics of “live” video. Campus wrote that “the video camera makes possible an exterior point of view simultaneous with one’s own. This advance over the film camera is due to the vidicon tube, similar to the retina of the eye, continuously transposing light (photon) energy to electrical energy . . . . It is easy to utilize video to clarify perceptual situations because it separates the eye surrogate from the eyebrain experience we are all too familiar with.” ttp://www.experimentaltvcenter.org/history/people/ptext.php3?id=42 In 1968 I.J. Good published a paper called Proposal for some eye-brain experiments in Nature. Good, as far as I can tell was a mathematician involved with computers… I think that while we today can understand the idea of eyebrain through genetics and embryology, it was actually a metaphor for how the eye and brain interacted for use with computers and motion. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Gendanken, You're just as bad in my opinion as your attack posts are a big part of the reason profs do the stuff you don't like. Cut them some slack and they won't be so prickly either. It's not easy to have true mastery over such a large body of knowledge. That was part of my point in the post of the 23rd ... it takes too to tango and you're stepping on his mango. Play nice.
The eye has neurons that act as receptors and information processors. The retina is a part of the visual information processing pathway, which finally ends up in the occipital lobe cortex (primary visual cortex... and then moves on to higher levels of processing in further areas of the brain). The nerve which inputs visual information into the brain is a cranial nerve and thus belongs to the peripheral nervous system. The eye is not a part of the brain. The eye itself is an sensory organ, which contains parts of the peripheral nervous system. I think your teacher called it a part of the brain to demonstrate the fact that information processing starts in the eye. You have to remember that all the names we use are artificial. You really can't tell where the brain ends and the retina starts. So you have to draw a line somewhere. I just depends on which basis you want to draw it. Anatomically? Physiologically? Or by function? The "some scientists believe" should be: you can also see the nervous system as a functional whole, which includes every organ that contributes to afferent and efferent signal processing. This actually leads to a point of view where the whole human body is constructed to serve the nervous system. You have your eye-brain, and then you have your leg-brain...
Some people seem to have taken offence where none was intended. I don't think that the monkey intended to appear condescending - "standard stuff' does not mean 'simple stuff that you should know'. The terms that required explaining were explained. The question was answered in just the right detail. I a bit puzzled by Gendanken's ranting... he says he "knows his stuff", but appears to think that most other forum readers are unable to read a paragraph with a couple of big words in it. I don't pretend to know what all the terms in the monkey's post mean, but it contained enough explanation to be an easily understandable response.
Interestingly, it appears that primitive eves existed before brains did, and that eye-brains evolved from the primitive eyes.
Every motor coordinated and sensory apparatus in the body can be thought of as an extension of the brain as thay are all linked via the neural pathways. The ear itself does some sound 'processing' before signals are sent to the brain.
