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An active visual receptor can reduce signals from its neighbors through lateral inhibition. Experiments with horseshoe crab optic nerve fibers helped reveal how neighboring nerve cells influence one another.

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49:55Moving on to the discovery of lateral inhibition in 1932. Yes. So this is biophysicist Keer Hartline. He isolated electrical impulses from single optic nerve fibers that that are coming out of the eye at the University of Pennsylvania. He was studying the model organism of the horseshoe crab. and he discovered lateral inhibition, which is this idea that, you know, if I've got an excitation on a photo receptor over here, it's going to decrease the amount of input that's coming out on its surrounding. This is where we get onoff cells in the retina. And this is really where we start thinking about how nerve cells can start influencing their

50:35neighbors in ways that are super non-trivial. Like here, this is a negative feedback. It's the first time that that's really actually happening. 1967 Nobel Prize in Medicine. >> Wow. We continue to shield California. The 13 colonies are definitely carrying

From the episode
  1. EP 46

    America 250: The Breakthroughs That Built American Science — Part 1

    Part one of our America 250 special traces the inventions, institutions, and scientific breakthroughs — from Franklin to Sputnik — that helped build the United States into a global scientific power.

    America 250: The Breakthroughs That Built American Science — Part 1

America 250History of Science