NEURAL EVENTS AND PSYCHOPHYSICAL LAW
NEURAL EVENTS AND PSYCHOPHYSICAL LAW
复制标题
DOI：
10.1126/science.170.3962.1043
复制
发表时间：
1970-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
56.9
通讯作者：
STEVENS, SS
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
STEVENS, SS
1800年，伏打用他新发明的电池组装了一个大电池组，并将整个电池组连接到插在他耳朵里的一对金属棒上。当他合上开关时，他感到脑袋一震，接着是一种像汤沸腾的声音。几年后，在类似的好奇心驱使下，EH韦伯说服他的兄弟接受耳朵电极。韦伯兄弟说他什么也没听到，但他看到一道光，似乎正好穿过他的头。自从那些英勇的日子以来，许多实验者已经证实了感觉系统的特异性：无论我们如何刺激它们，它们都在做各自的事情。感觉质量似乎取决于哪条神经被激活，以及它在大脑中的位置。问题就在这里，但大脑可以区分数量和质量。感觉的强度如何？接近的喷气式飞机的噪音从轻微的隆隆声变成雷鸣般的轰鸣声，同时通过同一个感觉器官和沿着同一条听觉神经发射信息。系统是如何处理如此巨大的刺激强度差异的？这个问题直到20世纪20年代才成为真正的科学问题，当时神经密码被破译，神经冲动的行为表现为全有或全无事件。在此之前，
In the year 1800 Volta assembled a large battery of his newly invented cells and connected the total array to a pair of metal rods inserted in his ears. When he closed the switch he felt a jolt in the head, followed by a noise like the boiling of thick soup. Goaded by a similar curiosity some years later, EH Weber persuaded his brother to submit to electrodes in the ears. Brother Weber said he heard nothing, but he saw a light that seemed to pass right across his head. Since those heroic days, many experimeters have confirmed the specificity of the sensory systems: however we excite them, they do their separate things. Sensory quality depends, it seems, on which nerve is actuated and where in the brain it leads. And there the problem rests.But the brain can distinguish quantity as well as quality. What about the magnitude of the sensation? The noise of the approaching jet grows from a gentle rumble to a thunderous roar, all the while firing messages through the same sense organ and along the same auditory nerve. How does the system manage the processing of such vast differences in stimulus intensity? That question became a genuine scientific question only in the 1920's when the neural code was broken and it was disclosed that nerve impulses behave as all-or-none events. Prior to that dis-