Earlier this year Bill Bialek organized a little symposium at the Initiative for Theoretical Science at the CUNY Graduate Center, on Adaptation, Inference and Natural Sensory Inputs. Speaker Wei Ji Ma began with a wonderful quote from Al Hazen (965-1040) that captures the essence of what many of us are trying to understand:
“Not everything that is perceived by sight is perceived through brute sensation: instead many visible characteristics will be perceived through judgment, in conjunction with the sensation of the form that is seen.”
Fairhall lab 