ABSTRACT
One distinguished neurophysiologist said, sotto voce to the author fol lowing a lecture, “although most neurophysiologists record single-cell ac tion potentials and report the input-output relations, I am pretty well con vinced that most of them think they have found the key to the explanation of the soul.” Although most neuroscientists would disclaim this accusation, many would agree with Horridge’s (1969) statement: “The aim of neuro biology is the explanation of behavior [p. 1].” Single cells explain virtually nothing important about the molar or total behavior of an organism. Molar
behavior can be explained only by invoking processes that involve the inter actions of large numbers of neurons. Any attempt to do so solely with the premises of single-cell physiology quickly runs into difficulty. Not only is there a persistent logical problem in explaining why the activity of any one cell or group of cells should be more important than any of their neigh bors, but the actual time dimensions of single-cell responses are also different from the temporal properties of behavioral responses. Where per cepts last for tenths of a second, neural responses last for milliseconds. Where neurons can respond to separate stimuli a millisecond apart, the human observer is unable to separate two events that occur less than ten or twenty milliseconds apart (Uttal, 1959).
