David H. Hubel

David H. Hubel
David H. Hubel
Born February 27, 1926 (1926-02-27) (age 85)
Windsor, Ontario
Nationality Canada, USA
Fields Neurophysiologist
Alma mater McGill University
Known for Visual system
Notable awards Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine(1981)

David Hunter Hubel (born February 27, 1926) is the John Franklin Enders Professor of Neurobiology, Emeritus, at Harvard Medical School. He was co-recipient with Torsten Wiesel of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system; the prize was shared with Roger W. Sperry for his independent research on the cerebral hemispheres. In 1978, Hubel and Wiesel were awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University.

Contents

Research

The Hubel and Wiesel experiments greatly expanded the scientific knowledge of sensory processing. In one experiment, done in 1959, they inserted a microelectrode into the primary visual cortex of an anesthetized cat. They then projected patterns of light and dark on a screen in front of the cat. They found that some neurons fired rapidly when presented with lines at one angle, while others responded best to another angle. Some of these neurons responded differently to light patterns than to dark patterns. Hubel and Wiesel called these neurons simple cells."[1] Still other neurons, which they termed complex cells, detected edges regardless of where they were placed in the receptive field of the neuron and could preferentially detect motion in certain directions.[2] These studies showed how the visual system constructs complex representations of visual information from simple stimulus features.[3]

Hubel and Wiesel received the Nobel Prize for two major contributions: 1. their work on development of the visual system, which involved a description of ocular dominance columns in the 1960s and 1970s; and 2. their work establishing a foundation for visual neurophysiology, describing how signals from the eye are processed by the brain to generate edge detectors, motion detectors, stereoscopic depth detectors and color detectors, building blocks of the visual scene. By depriving kittens from using one eye, they showed that columns in the primary visual cortex receiving inputs from the other eye took over the areas that would normally receive input from the deprived eye. This has important implications for the understanding of deprivation amblyopia, a type of visual loss due to unilateral visual deprivation during the so-called critical period. These kittens also did not develop areas receiving input from both eyes, a feature needed for binocular vision. Hubel and Wiesel's experiments showed that the ocular dominance develops irreversibly early in childhood development. These studies opened the door for the understanding and treatment of childhood cataracts and strabismus. They were also important in the study of cortical plasticity.[3] Furthermore, the understanding of sensory processing in animals served as inspiration for the SIFT descriptor (Lowe, 1999), which is a local feature used in computer vision for tasks such as object recognition and wide-baseline matching, etc. The SIFT descriptor is arguably the most widely used feature type for these tasks.

Biography

Hubel was born in Windsor, Ontario to American parents in 1926. His paternal grandfather emigrated as a child to the U.S.A. from the Bavarian town of Nördlingen. In 1929, his family moved to Montreal where he spent his formative years. From age six to eighteen, he attended Strathcona Academy in Outremont, Quebec about which he said, "[I owe] much to the excellent teachers there, especially to Julia Bradshaw, a dedicated, vivacious history teacher with a memorable Irish temper, who awakened me to the possibility of learning how to write readable English." He studied mathematics and physics at McGill University, and then entered medical school there. In 1954, he moved to the United States to work at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as an assistant resident in Neurology. He was later drafted by the army and served at Walter Reed Hospital. There, he began recording from the primary visual cortex of sleeping and awake cats. At Walter Reed, he invented the modern metal microelectrode out of Stoner-Mudge lacquer and tungsten, and the modern hydraulic microdrive, for which he had to learn rudimentary machinists skills to produce. In 1958, he moved to Johns Hopkins and began his collaborations with Wiesel, and discovered orientation selectivity and columnar organization in visual cortex. One year later, he joined the faculty of Harvard University.

Publications

  • Hubel, D. H. & T. N. Wiesel, Receptive Fields Of Single Neurones In The Cat's Striate Cortex, Journal of Physiology, (I959) I48, 574-59I.
  • Hubel, D. H. & T. N. Wiesel. Receptive Fields, Binocular Interaction And Functional Architecture In The Cat's Visual Cortex, Journal of Physiology, (1962), 160, pp. 106–154, With 2 plates and 20 text-figures.

See also

References

  1. ^ David H. Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel (2005). Brain and visual perception: the story of a 25-year collaboration. Oxford University Press US. p. 106. ISBN 9780195176186. http://books.google.com/books?id=8YrxWojxUA4C&pg=PA106&lpg=PA106&dq=hubel+1959#v=onepage&q=hubel%201959&f=false. 
  2. ^ Hubel, David. Eye, Brain and Vision. http://hubel.med.harvard.edu/. , Chapter 4, pg 16
  3. ^ a b Goldstein (2001). Sensation and Perception (6th ed.). London: Wadsworth. 

External links


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  • David H. Hubel — David Hunter Hubel David Hunter Hubel (né le 27 février 1926, à Windsor au Canada) est un neurobiologiste américain. Sommaire 1 Biographie 2 Travaux 3 Honneurs …   Wikipédia en Français

  • David Hunter Hubel — (* 27. Februar 1926 in Windsor, Ontario, Kanada) ist ein kanadisch/US amerikanischer Neurobiologe. Hubel ist Professor für Neurobiologie an der Harvard Medical School in Cambridge (Boston), Massachusetts. 1981 erhielt er zusammen mit Torsten N.… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • David Hunter Hubel — (27 février 1926, à Windsor, Ontario, Canada) est un neurobiologiste américano canadien. Sommaire 1 Biographie 2 Travaux 3 Honneurs …   Wikipédia en Français

  • David H. Hubel — David Hunter Hubel (* 27. Februar 1926 in Windsor, Ontario, Kanada) ist ein kanadisch/US amerikanischer Neurobiologe. Hubel ist Professor für Neurobiologie an der Harvard Medical School in Cambridge (Boston), Massachusetts. 1981 erhielt er… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • David Hunter Hubel — Saltar a navegación, búsqueda David Hunter Hubel (1926 ), nació en Windsor Canadá. Estudia en la Universidad McGill en Montreal, se doctora en Medicina en 1951. Trabaja inicialmente en el Instituto de Neurología de Montreal y posteriormente en la …   Wikipedia Español

  • David H. Hubel — David Hunter Hubel (1926 ), nació en Windsor Canadá. Estudia en la Universidad de McGill en Montreal, se doctora en Medicina en 1951. Trabaja inicialmente en el Instituto de Neurología de Montreal y posteriormente en la Universidad de Johns… …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Medizinnobelpreis 1981: Roger Wolcott Sperry — David Hunter Hubel — Torsten Nils Wiesel —   Die Amerikaner und der Schwede teilten sich den Nobelpreis für »Entdeckungen zur funktionellen Spezialisierung der Gehirnhemisphären« und für »Entdeckungen über Informationsbearbeitung im Sehwahrnehmungssystem«.    Biografien   Roger Wolcott… …   Universal-Lexikon

  • David Hubel — David Hunter Hubel David Hunter Hubel (né le 27 février 1926, à Windsor au Canada) est un neurobiologiste américain. Sommaire 1 Biographie 2 Travaux 3 Honneurs …   Wikipédia en Français

  • David Hubel — David Hunter Hubel (* 27. Februar 1926 in Windsor, Ontario, Kanada) ist ein kanadisch/US amerikanischer Neurobiologe. Hubel ist Professor für Neurobiologie an der Harvard Medical School in Cambridge (Boston), Massachusetts. 1981 erhielt er… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Hubel — ist der Familienname von David H. Hubel (* 1926), kanadisch/US amerikanischer Neurobiologe und Nobelpreisträger Helmut Hubel, (* 1951), deutscher Politologe Hubel ist ein Ortsteil der Gemeinde Neuendorf SO im Kanton Solothurn in der Schweiz …   Deutsch Wikipedia

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