Jerome Lettvin

Jerome Ysroael Lettvin

Jerome Lettvin in Building 20 at MIT in 1952 [1]
Born (1920-02-23)February 23, 1920
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Died April 23, 2011(2011-04-23) (aged 91)
Hingham, Massachusetts, USA
Nationality American
Fields Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Electrical Engineering, Communications Physiology, Mythopoetry
Institutions Rutgers (1988–2011)
MIT (1951–2011)
Stazione Zoologica
Manteno State Hospital (1948–1951)
University of Rochester (1947)
Alma mater University of Illinois (B.S., M.D. 1943)
Notable students Norman Geschwind[2]
Known for "What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain"
Leary-Lettvin debate
Influences Norbert Wiener
Warren McCulloch
Walter Pitts
Derek Denny-Brown
Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Charles Scott Sherrington
John Zachary Young
Spouse Maggie (1947–)

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),[3] 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.[4] 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"[5] 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.[6] 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.[7] 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.

Scientific philosophy

Lettvin with Walter Pitts.

Lettvin considered any experiment a failure from which the experimental animal does not recover to a comfortable happy life. He was one of the very few neurophysiologists who successfully recorded pulses from unmyelinated vertebrate axons. His main approach to scientific observation seems to have been reductio ad absurdum, finding the least observation that contradicts a key assumption in the proposed theory. This led to some unusual experiments. In the paper "What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain", he took a major risk by proposing feature detectors in the retina. When he presented this paper at a conference, he was laughed off the stage by his peers, yet for the next ten years it was the single most cited scientific paper. For Lettvin, a corollary to finding contradictions was taking risks: the bigger the risk, the likelier a new finding. Robert Provine quotes him as asking, "If it does not change everything, why waste your time doing the study?"

Lettvin made a careful study of the work of Leibniz, discovering that he had constructed a mechanical computer in the late 17th century.

Lettvin is also known for his friendship with, and encouragement of, the genius cognitive scientist and logician Walter Pitts, a polymath who first showed the relationship between the philosophy of Leibniz and universal computing in "A Logical Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity," a seminal paper Pitts co-authored with Warren McCulloch.

Lettvin continued to research the properties of nervous systems throughout his life, culminating in his study of ion dynamics in axon cytoskeleton.

The fact that Lettvin worried about how scientists approach their work is evidenced in a playful translation/adaptation he made of a poem by Christian Morgenstern:

Σ Ξ MAN MET A Π MAN

After many "if"s and "but"s,
emendations, notes, and cuts,

they bring their theory, complete,
to lay, for Science, at his feet.

But Science, sad to say it, he
seldom heeds the laity

abstractedly he flips his hand,
mutters "metaphysic" and

bends himself again to start
another curve on another chart.

"Come," says Pitts, "his line is laid;
the only points he'll miss, we've made."

Like his other translations of Morgenstern's poems,[8] this retains the playfulness of the originals.

Unusual experiments

Lettvin in his Faraday cage in Building 20 at MIT in 1952.
vertebrate unmyelinated axons exhibit sub-millisecond triphasic spikes
action potentials found at myelinated nodes of Ranvier are altogether absent in Remak fibers
a cut optic nerve trained to the olfactory lobe regrows, remapping the retina
(Functional Properties of regenerated axons, Brain Research 1995)
senses appear to direct brain growth rather than the reverse
axonal stimulation backfires into the cell body
action potentials can travel from axons to the axon hillock and into the cell
stimulating the bulbo-reticular inhibitory system stops strychnine convulsions
reflexes have system-wide attenuation controls
axon pulse intervals can be separated into bands;
[9]some form of information is encoded in pulse intervals
color constancy derives from boundaries and vertices imaged on the retina
(The Colors of Things, Scientific American 1986)
color is relational, not related to wavelength
images stationary on the retina fade to invisible
temporal or spatial transients are critical to vision
visible insects cause no nervous activity in a frog that sees a duck
attention obeys hierarchical rules

While working in the Marine Zoological Station in Naples, Letttvin had a 30-foot-long (9.1 m) room in which octopus holding tanks were kept, with fine mesh metal screens to keep them from escaping. One tank, at the far end, held his youngest son Jonathan's pet octopus, known as Juvenile Delinquent or JD.[10] One day he teased JD with a stick. The next morning, he and his son came to the door, and noticed a puddle. Fearing that the tanks had broken, Lettvin opened the door, and was greeted by a blast of water in his face (but not his son's face). From across the room, and through the screen, JD had perfect aim, after which he jetted to the bottom of the tank, inked it up, and hid for the rest of the day. Still confused about the water under the door, Lettvin looked at the back of the door and saw a spot of water at the height of his face. JD had been practicing for revenge. From this and other experiences, Lettvin concluded that octopodes are highly intelligent, and from that time on he never ate octopus again.

Politics

Lettvin was a firm advocate of individual rights and heterogeneous society. His father nurtured these views with ideas from Kropotkin's book Mutual Aid. Lettvin became an expert witness in trials in both the United States and in Israel, always on behalf of individual rights.

During the anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s, Lettvin helped to negotiate agreements between police and protesters, and in 1968 he took part in the student takeover of the MIT Student Center in support of an AWOL soldier.[11] He deplored the making of laws based on false science and false statistics, and the distortion of observations for political or economic advantage.

When the American Academy of Arts and Sciences withdrew its award of the annual Emerson-Thoreau medal from Ezra Pound because of his vocal support for Italian Fascism, Lettvin resigned from the Academy and wrote in his resignation letter: "It is not art that concerns you but politics, not taste but special interest, not excellence but propriety."

Debating

Main article: Leary-Lettvin debate

On May 3, 1967, in the Kresge Auditorium at MIT, Lettvin debated with Timothy Leary about the merits and dangers of LSD. Leary took the position that LSD is a beneficial tool in exploring consciousness. Lettvin took the position that LSD is a dangerous molecule that should not be used.[1][12][13]

Lettvin was a regular invitee at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony as "the world's smartest man," and debated extemporaneously against groups of people on their own subjects of expertise.

Published papers

References

  1. 1 2 "Jerome Lettvin Stories", More Data, More Noise: A Celebration of the 60th Birthday of Jerome Y. Lettvin, MIT, February 1980. (archived 2011)
  2. ↑ Squire 1998, p. 229
  3. ↑ 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
  4. ↑ "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."
  5. ↑ Gross, Charles G., Genealogy of the "Grandmother Cell", NEUROSCIENTIST 8(5):512–518, 2002. doi:10.1177/107385802237175
  6. 1 2 Jerome Lettvin page
  7. ↑ Squire, Larry R., The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography, Volume 2, Society for Neuroscience, 1998. Cf. pp. 223-243 on Jerome Lettvin.
  8. ↑ The Fat Abbot, 1962
  9. ↑ Multiple meaning in single visual units
  10. ↑ Jonathan D. Lettvin Home Page
  11. ↑ "Six-Day M.I.T. Sanctuary Ends Quietly Without Bust", The Harvard Crimson, Monday, November 04, 1968
  12. ↑ "Leary and Lettvin Clash on Drugs In M.I.T. Debate", The Harvard Crimson, Thursday, May 4, 1967
  13. ↑ Collins, Bud, "LSD Lion Loses to M.I.T. Mauler", The Boston Globe, November 24, 1967. N.B. later reprinted in Collins, Bud, "LSD Lion Loses to M.I.T. Mauler", Psychiatric Quarterly, Volume 42, Number 1 (1968), 104-106, doi:10.1007/BF01563956

Further reading

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