Читать книгу The Form Within - Karl H Pribram - Страница 29

Within a few days of my encounters with Jack Hilgard, a postdoctoral fellow in my laboratory, Nico Spinelli, brought us an article by the eminent neurophysiologist John Eccles that had appeared in 1958 in Scientific American. In this article, Eccles pointed out that, although we could only examine synapses—junctions between brain cells—one by one, the branching of large fiber axons into fine fibers just as they are approaching a synapse makes it necessary for us to regard the electrical activity occurring in these finefibered branches as forming a wave front. This was one of those “aha” moments scientists like me are always hoping for. I immediately recognized that such wave fronts when reaching synapses from different directions, would provide exactly those long-sought-after interference patterns Lash-ley had proposed.

Despite my excitement at this instant realization, I also felt like an utter fool. The answer to my years of discussion with Lashley about how such interference patterns among micro-waves could be generated in the brain had all the time been staring us both in the face—and neither of us had had the wit to see it.