Conceptual Change in Visual Neuroscience: The Receptive Field Concept

ABSTRACT

I focus on the concept of the receptive field of a sensory neuron, taking it as a prominent case to address conceptual change in the history of neuroscience. I argue for an interpretation of its role and evolution based on the idea, previously rehearsed in the philosophy of biology, of a problem agenda. I claim that the concept's main contribution to visual neuroscience was that of establishing a problem agenda for the early experimental research on visual processing, thus structuring the field's experimental practices and integration between converging scientific fields. I pay particular attention to the research programme led by Hubel and Wiesel, revolving their famous experiments on the cat's visual cortex during the 60s, when receptive field exploration blossomed. I additionally claim that the concept's more recent evolution, witnessing a loss in its definiteness and centrality, can be accommodated by my account.

KEYWORDS:

• receptive field
• conceptual change
• problem agenda
• visual neuroscience
• Hubel and Wiesel

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A case in point here is Haueis’ (2016) analysis of the early development of the cortical column concept and its role in fostering a new domain of research: Haueis’ account stresses the role of concept formation and development in sensory neuroscience in the absence of theory, additionally claiming that the resultant understanding of the cortex should not be considered as providing a theory of its functional architecture.

2 Although there have been relevant advances on the topic of conceptual change in the philosophy of neuroscience, especially driven by case-studies such as the already mentioned cortical column or memory transfer, the contributions I turn to here are more wide-ranging and systematic and, I think, offer a template that can be fruitfully applied to the concept of RF, additionally extending the debate to the broad arena of conceptual change in philosophy of science.

3 For an in-depth account on exploratory experimentation in fMRI-based research in cognitive neuroscience, see Venturelli (2021).

4 As Kandel (2009) recounts, it was in fact a chance meeting in Kuffler's laboratory at John Hopkins hospital that sealed the beginning of Hubel and Wiesel's collaboration, subsequently underpinned through the creation of the Laboratory of Neurobiology at Harvard.

5 It is worth acknowledging here Horace Barlow as a key contributor to their experimental approach: In particular, his area-threshold technique, presented in 1953, consisting of using light spots of different sizes and measuring thresholds, was used by Wiesel (1960) in order to study RF size.

6 It must be noted that a critical contribution to this emerging hierarchical processing view was the already mentioned concept of cortical column, originally proposed by Vernon Mountcastle and colleagues in 1955, a concept that Hubel and Wiesel subsequently developed and deemed crucial in order to make sense of the ‘otherwise puzzling aggregation’ (Hubel and Wiesel 1962, 144) of simple and complex cells in primary visual cortex. I refer here to the important contribution by Haueis (2016) on the origin and early impact of this concept.

7 The topic of perceptual context effects on neural function has been much debated by neuroscientists and philosophers of neuroscience alike. See Burnston (2016) for an in-depth philosophical treatment centred on the middle temporal area of the visual cortex.