Abstract
THIS volume is the outcome of a symposium on “Visual Mechanisms” organized in September 1941 for the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the University of Chicago. It is in twelve chapters, each written by specialists engaged in research on particular aspects of vision and each dealing with the advances and outstanding problems in a special field. With such a composition it might well have become no more than a series of disconnected reviews, but the authors and editor have made it into something which can be read straight through with pleasure by anyone interested in vision. Careful arrangement of the subject-matter is partly responsible, for we are led by easy stages from the material to the mental, from the photochemical reactions of the retina to the problems of visual recognition and learning. Thus the first chapter is by Selig Hecht, written with his usual lucidity, on the number of quanta needed for visual sensation. The chemistry of the visual pigments is dealt with by A. C. Krause and George Wald, there is a middle section on the activities of the visual pathways as they are revealed by electro-physiological techniques, and this leads up to the discussions by Lashley and Kluver on the way in which visual stimuli can be supposed to determine behaviour.
Visual Mechanisms
Edited by Prof. Heinrich Kluver. (Biological Symposia, Vol. 7.) Pp. viii + 322. (Lancaster, Pa.: The Jacques Cattell Press, 1942.) n. p.
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ADRIAN, E. Visual Mechanisms. Nature 150, 727 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/150727a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/150727a0