| Summary: | Recent electrophysiological studies of visual mechanisms in frogs have demonstrated that a high degree of selection of specific information occurs right at the retinal level (Barlow, 1953a and 1953b; Lettvin et al., 1959; Maturans et al., 1960). This research has important theoretical implications for the behavioral sciences, but there have been few systematic laboratory studies of the effects of specific visual stimuli on amphibian behavior. It has long been assumed that the retina transduces visual information into nerve impulse patterns, and that a faithful replica of the visual world is transmitted to the brain, where all information processing is believed to occur. Physiological studies of retinal processes have shown that the mechanisms are not as simple as this.
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