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Jerome Lettvin

Jerome Ysroael Lettvin (born Chicago, February 231920) is a cognitive scientist and professor Emeritus of Electrical and Bioengineering and Communications Physiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Jerome Lettvin is best known as author of "What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain", (1959) one of the most cited papers in the Science Citation Index. He wrote it along with Humberto Maturana, Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts. He 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.^[1]

Jerome Lettvin is popularly known as Jerry, and is the author of many published articles on subjects varying from neurology and physiology to philosophy and politics.

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Early life

Jerry was born February 23, 1920 in Chicago as eldest of four children (including pianist Theodore Lettvin) to Solomon and Fanny Lettvin. Trained as a neurologist and psychiatrist, he practiced medicine at the battle of the Bulge during World War II. 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 McCullough under Norbert Wiener.

Scientific philosophy

Jerry Lettvin considers any experiment a failure from which the experimental animal does not recover to a comfortable happy life. He is one of the very few neurophysiologists that have successfully recorded pulses from unmyelinated vertebrate axons. His main approach to scientific observation seems to be "reductio ad absurdum"; or find the least observation that contradicts a key assumption in the proposed theory. This has led to unusual experiments being performed.

He has made a careful study of the work of Leibniz, discovering that he had constructed a mechanical computer in the 1600s, amongst other creations hundreds of years ahead of his time. Jerome Lettvin is also known for his friendship with the genius cognitive scientist and logician Walter Pitts, a polymath who first showed the relationship between the philosophy of Leibniz, universal computing and "A Logical Calculus Immanent in Nervous Activity".

He continues to research the properties of nervous systems.

Unusual Experiments

vertebrate axons exhibit sub-millisecond triphasic spikes;
action potentials are found at nodes of Ranvier but are absent in Remak fibers

a cut optic nerve trained to the olfactory lobe regrows, remapping the retina;
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;
some form of information is encoded in pulse intervals

color constancy derives from boundaries and vertices in motion over the retina;
color is not related to wavelength

images stationary on the retina fade to invisible;
movement is critical to vision

visible insects cause no nervous activity in a frog that sees a duck;
attention obeys hierarchical rules

Politics

Jerry is a firm advocate of individual rights and heterogeneous society. His father nurtured these views with ideas from Kropotkin's book "Mutual Aid". He has been expert witness in trials in both the U.S. and in Israel always on behalf of individual rights.

During the antiwar riots of the 1960s he helped negotiate agreements between police and protesters. He deplores when law is made using false science and false statistics, or when proper observations are distorted for advantage.

When the American Academy of Arts and Sciences withdrew its award of the annual Emerson-Thoreau medal from Ezra Pound for his leanings during World War II, Jerry resigned from the academy, in which letter he wrote "It is not art that concerns you but politics, not taste but special interest, not excellence but propriety."

Quotes

"I love things complexly because they are complex."

"Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which otherwise require harder thinking."

"Give me a helical lever and a place to stand and I will screw the world."

Upon his resignation (evidently in frustration) from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: "At this time, nausea overtakes me and I resign [from the Academy]."

Anecdotes/Factoids

Jerry had a brief stint writing horror pictures in Hollywood.

He co-developed an anti-wiretapping device which he nearly sold to the Mafia (or "my friends the bookies" depending on what mood he's in when telling the story). He was prevented from doing so by the military, and his plans for this device became classified.

When building 20 was torn down, Jerry was dismayed to find that he wasn't allowed to smoke inside his new office. He moved his office to a janitor's shed on top of the newer building, where he could continue his smoking habit in relative peace.

In 1967, Jerry debated Timothy Leary about the merits of LSD. Jerry hurled the timeless epithet "BULLSHIT!" at Leary, who was sitting in the lotus position near a candle. This in response to Leary (a licensed psychologist) characterizing the frank symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy as a religious experience.

While working in the Marine Zoological Station in Naples, Italy, he had a 30 foot long 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's pet octopus named juvenile delinquent (JD). One day he teased JD with a stick. The next morning, his son and he came to the door and noticed a puddle under the door. Fearing the worst (broken tanks), he 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, Jerry 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, Jerry concluded that an octopus is highly intelligent, and from that time on, he never ate octopus again, out of respect for octopus as colleagues.

His translations of Morgenstern's poems from German retain the playfulness of the originals.

His wife, Maggie Lettvin, was so badly injured in an automobile accident that doctors predicted she would be a permanent cripple. Within a year, she recovered the ability to walk, and within another year or so, she began conducting an exercise program on a local television station.

Published papers

Year Title, Publication, Issue; Contributing Authors^[2]

1943 A mathematical theory of the affective psychoses, Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, Vol. 5; (with Pitts)
1948 Somatic functions of the central nervous system, Annual Review of Physiology Vol. 10; (with McCulloch)
1948 The path of suppression in the spinal grey matter, Federation Proceedings, Vol. 7, No. 1, March; (with McCulloch)
1950 An electrical hypothesis of central inhibition and facilitation, Proceedings of the Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Diseases, Vol. 30, December; (with McCulloch, Pitts, and Dell)
1950 Positivity in ventral horn during bulbar reticular inhibition of motoneurons Federation Proceedings, Vol. 9, No. 1, March; (with Dell and McCulloch)
1951 Changes produced in the central nervous system by ultrasound, Science, Vol. 114, No. 2974; (with Wall, Fry, Stephens, and Tucker)
1952 Sources and sinks of current in the spinal cord, Federation Proceedings, Vol. 11, No. 1, March; (with Pitts and Brazier)
1953 Comparaison entre les machines a calculer et le cerveau, Les machines à calculer et la pensée humaine, Vo.l. 37, pp. 425-443; (with McCulloch, Pitts, and Dell)
1953 On microelectrodes for plotting currents in nervous tissue, Proceedings of the Physiological Society, Vol. 122; (with Howland, McCulloch, Pitts, and Wall)
1954 Maps derived by bipolar microelectrode stimulation within the spinal cord, Federation Proceedings, Vol. 13, March; (with Pitts, McCulloch, Wall, and Howland)
1955 Physiology of a primary chemoreceptor unit, Science, Vol. 122, No. 3166, September; (with Hodgson and Roeder)
1955 Reflex inhibition by dorsal root interaction, Journal of Neurophysiology', vol.18; (with Howland, McCulloch, Pitts, and Wall)
1955 Effects of strychnine with special reference to spinal afferent fibres, Epilepsia, Series III, Vol. 4; (with Wall, McCulloch, and Pitts)
1955 The terminal arborisation of the cat's pyramidal tract determined by a new technique, The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, Vol. 28, Nos. 3-4, Dec.-Feb.; (with Wall, McCulloch, and Pitts)
1956 Excitability changes in anatomical components of the monosynaptic are following tetanic stimulation, Federation Proceedings, Vol. 15, No. 1, March; (with McCulloch and Pitts)
1956 Limits on nerve impulse transmission, IRE Convention Record, National, Part 4, March 19-20; (with Wall, Pitts, and McCulloch)
1956 Central effects of strychnine on spinal afferent fibres, A.M.A. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, Vol. 75: 323-324; (with McCulloch, Pitts, and Wall)
1957 Membrane currents in clamped vertebrate nerve, Nature, Vol. 180, pp. 1290-1291, Dec. 7; (with McCulloch, and Pitts)
1956/1957 Footnotes on a headstage, IRE Transactions on Medical Electronics; (with Howland and Gesteland)
1956 Evidence that cut optic nerve fibers in a frog regenerate to their proper places in the tectum, Science, Vol. 130, No. 3390, December; (with Maturana, McCulloch, and Pitts)
1959 How seen movement appears in the frog's optic nerve, Federation Proceedings Vol. 18, No. 1, March; (with Maturana, Pitts, and McCulloch)
1959 What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain, Proceedings of the IRE, Vol. 47, No. 11, November; (with Maturana, McCulloch, and Pitts)
1959 Comments on microelectrodes, Proceedings of the IRE, Vol. 47, No. 11, November; (with Gesteland, Howland, and Pitts)
1959 Number of fibres in the optic nerve and the number of ganglion cells in the retina of anurans, Nature, Vol. 183, pp. 1406-1407, May 16; (with Maturana)
1959 Bridge for measuring the impedance of metal microelectrodes, The Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 30, No. 4, April; (with Gesteland and Howland)
1960 Anatomy and physiology of vision in the frog (Rana pipiens), The Journal of General Physiology, Vol. 43, No. 6, Supplement pp. 129-175; (withMaturana, McCulloch, and Pitts)
1961 Two remarks on the visual system of the frog, Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT, Vol. 38; (with Maturana, Pitts, and McCulloch)
1963 Odor specificites of the frog's olfactory receptors, Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste (Pergamon Press); (with Gesteland, Pitts, and Rojas)
1964 A theory of passive ion flux through axon membranes, Nature, Vol. 202, No. 4939, pp. 1338-1339, June; (with Pickard, McCulloch, and Pitts)
1964 Microelectrodes research laboratory of electronics, MIT Encyclopedia of Electrochemistry, (Reinhold Publishing Corporation: New York), pp. 822-826; (with Gesteland, Howland, and Pitts)
1964 Receptor model of the frog's nose, NEREM Record; (with Gesteland)
1964 Caesium ions do not pass the membrane of the giant axon, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 52, No. 5, pp. 1177-1183; (with Pickard, Moore, Takata, Pooler, and Bernstein)
1964? Lanthanum simulates high calcium and reduces conductance changes in nerve membranes, XXIII International Congress of Physiological Sciences ; (with Moore, Takata, and Pickard)
1964 Passive transport of ions across nerve membranes, Minutes of the APS-NES 1964 Spring Meeting of the New England Section, 4 April; (with Pickard)
1964 Experiments in perception, Tech Engineering News, November;
1965 Chemical transmission in the nose of the frog, Journal of Physiology, Vol. 181, pp. 525-559; (with Gesteland, and Pitts)
1965 Octopus optic responses, Experimental Neurology, Vol. 12, No. 3, July; (with Boycott, Maturana, and Wall)
1965 Glass-coated tungsten microelectrodes, Science, Vol. 148, No.3676, pp. 1462-1464; (with Baldwin, and Frenk)
1965 Speculations on smell, Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, Vol. 30; (with Gesteland)
1965 General discussion: early receptor potential, Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, vol. 30; (with Platt, Wald, and Brown)
1966 Ionic conductance changes in lobster axon membrane when lanthanum is substituted for calcium, Journal of General Physiology, Vol. 50, Number 2, November; (with Takata, Pickard, and Moore)
1966 Alkali cation selectivity of a squid axon membrane, N.Y. Academy of Sciences, vol. 137, pp. 818-829; (with Moore, Anderson, Blaustein, Takata, Pickard, Bernstein, and Pooler)
1966 A demonstration of ion-exchange phenomena in phospholipid mono-molecular films, Nature, Vol. 209, No. 5026, pp. 886-887, February; (with Rojas and Pickard)
1967 You can't even step in the same river once, Journal of the American Museum of Natural History , Vol. 76, No. 8, October;
1968 A code in the nose, Cybernetic Problems in Bionics (Gordon and Breach Science Publishers); (with Gesteland, Pitts, and Chung)
1968 Pure renaissance, Natural History, June-July, p. 62
1969 The annotated octopus, Natural History, Vol. 78, No. 9, p. 10; (Sokolski with notes by Lettvin)
1970 Multiple meaning in single visual units, Brain, Behavior, and Evolution, vol.3, pp. 72-101; (with Chung and Raymond)
1970 The rise and fall of progress, Natural History, Vol. 79, No. 3, pp. 80-82, March
1972 Scratched and chiseled marks of man, Natural History
1974 The CLOOGE: a simple device for interspike interval analysis, Proceedings of the Physiological Society, vol. 239, pp. 63-66, February; (with Chung and Raymond)
1976 A physical model for the passage of ions through an ion-specific channel - I. The sodium-like channel, Mathematical Biosciences, vol.32, pp. 37-50; (with Pickard)
1976 Probability of conduction deficit as related to fiber length in random-distribution models of peripheral neuropathies, Journal of the Neurological Sciences, Vol. 29, pp. 39-53; (with Waxman, Brill, Geschwind, and Sabin)
1976 The use of myth, Technology Review, Vol. 78(7), pp. 52-57
1976 On seeing sidelong, The Sciences, Vol. 16, No. 4, July/August
1977 The gorgon's eye, Technology Review, Vol. 80(2), pp. 74-83
1977 Freedoms and constraints in color vision, Brain Theory Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 2, December; (with Linden)
1978 Aftereffects of activity in peripheral axons as a clue to nervous coding, Physiology and Pathobiology of Axons, edited by Waxman (Raven Press: New York); (with Raymond)
1978 Relation of the e-wave to ganglion cell activity and rod responses in the frog, Vision Research, Vol. 18, pp. 1181-1188; (with Newman)
1980 Anatomy and physiology of a binocular system in the frog Rana pipiens, Brain Research Vol. 192, pp. 313-325; (with Gruberg)
1983 Processing of polarized light by squid photoreceptors, Nature, Vol. 304, pp.534-536; (with Saidel and MacNichol)
1986 The colors of things, Scientific American, Vol.255.3, pp. 84-91; (with Brou, Philippe, Sciascia, and Linden)
1995 Functional Properties of Regenerated Optic Axons Terminating in the Primary Olfactory Cortex

References

^ Genealogy of the "Grandmother Cell", Charles G. Gross, The Neuroscientist, 2002
^ Published Papers