Download or read book Mach Bands written by Floyd Ratliff and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One hundred years ago Ernst Mach published the first of his several quantitative studies on the interdependence of neighboring elements in the retina. However, Mach's application of mathematical modes of thought to the study of the nervous system was so far ahead of the times that his papers attracted little attention when they first appeared. Within recent years considerable interest has developed in the mathematical analysis of the properties of complex neural networks. The main reason for this seemingly belated development of interest is that only within the last quarter-century or so have the techniques of electrophysiology finally become sufficiently advanced to provide a sound empirical foundation for such studies. The interplay of the fundamental neural processes of excitation and inhibition, about which Mach could only speculate, can now be observed directly and with relative ease in practically all parts of the nervous system.