2 AT HARVARD SHARE NOBEL IN MEDICINE
Author: By Loretta McLaughlin Globe Staff
Date: Saturday, October 10, 1981
Page: ?????
Section: RUN OF PAPER
The Nobel Prize in Medicine this year honors three scientists who have
remarkably advanced man's understanding of the human brain, the center of
intellect that separates him from lower animals.
Half of the $l80,000 prize will be shared by the Harvard neurobiology team
of David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, and the other half will be awarded to
California Institute of Technology psychobiologist Roger Sperry.
In a rare partnership, Hubel, 55, a native of Ontario, Canada, and Wiesel,
57, a native of Upsala, Sweden, have concentrated for 22 years on a single
line of research: how the brain processes visual information so that a person
is able to see.
Sperry, 68, discovered the largely independent functions of the two
spheres of the brain - right and left - showing that each is highly
specialized and that many of the higher realms of human brain function are
centered in the right brain.
At Harvard Medical School, Hubel and Wiesel work so intimately together
that they see themselves as a Gilbert and Sullivan science act - except that
the Harvard team's skills are virtually interchangeable, one being capable of
doing all that the other can.
About the only thing that separates them, Hubel said in a press conference
yesterday, is that, during their experiments on anesthetized cats and monkeys,
"Wiesel usually cannulates the vein, while I usually drill the hole in the
skull."
They said their work has built upon the foundation laid down by their
"teacher and scientific father," Stephen Kuffler, who founded the department
of neurobiology at Harvard. Kuffler died last year and "would be sharing in
this prize, had he lived," the Harvard team said. Only living scientists are
eligible for the award.
While their work has focused on vision, Hubel noted that understanding the
visual process helps explain other types of brain function.
"There has been a myth that the brain cannot understand itself,the brain
or the mind. It is compared to a man trying to lift himself by his own
bootstraps. We feel that is nonsense. The brain can be studied just as the
kidney can," Hubel said.
"We're interested in the brain for the same reason astronomers are
interested in the universe. It is a pale, an area still largely unexplored. We
are more explorers than discoverers," he said.
Both men have scrupulously avoided the limelight. Their immediate
reaction, when they heard they had won the Nobel, was consternation about
facing the news media and claims that may be made against their time by the
fame.
"The toughest commodity to come by is time," Hubel said. "It's a calamity
if something happens that takes up time needed for research."
Wiesel added, "One of the wonderful things in the United States is the way
research is funded by the federal government. "We've always received enough
money for our research and now we have adequate space and equipment. All we
need is time."
More than merely mapping the nerve pathways that relay visual impulses,
they have identified precise layers of brain tissue that analyze sight
messages.
Working with single cells, they learned that in an ascending order of
sophistication, categories of cells in the back of the brain (the visual
cortex* react to specific shapes, sizes, color and intensity of lines.
After cells with limited recognition complete their part of the job, they
pass the messages along to more sophisticated cells, which fit the bits and
pieces of an image together, until an image is formed. For example, one
segment of brain cells can only discern a single angle of a straight line.
But, in conjunction with other segments, slowly a pattern is deciphered that
puts the series of straight lines together as an arc or curve.
"The cells send their information to other brain cells, and those to still
others, and finally the image gets to a part of the brain where memory and
thinking, and perhaps the soul, reside. "We now can describe what happens,"
Wiesel said. "We don't know yet why it happens. This is something for the
future."
Sperry's work identified the very different functions of each half of the
brain. He found that the left side of the brain is cognitive' and handles
language and mathematic-type thinking, while the right side tends to be more
intuitive and creative.
His discoveries have refined the way brain injuries can be analyzed to
predict the long-term effects.
LMCLAU;10/09,15:17 MFEENE;10/11,18 B07861715
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