Toward a True Understanding of the Nervous System

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Abstract
There is a great deal of important research on the brain and on living nervous systems in general. Most of this concentrates on a principal viewpoint such as medical, biological or psychological. Realizing the great importance of obtaining a truly fundamental understanding of the concepts of information processing in living nervous systems (particularly humans) as a bridge between the physical sciences and the behavioral sciences, the California Institute of Technology instituted some years ago a concerted interdisciplinary program on the principles of sensory perception, central cortex activity and creative thought processes and their relation to motor activity and general behavior. This program brings together in intimate cooperative research the efforts of doctors, biologists, mathematicians, systems engineers and computer scientists. A unique feature of this research program is a specially developed complex of large-scale computers directly connected to experimental research which includes a wide variety of directly connected living nervous systems. This system and its utilization in some of the more interesting experiments together with the "state of the art" as to our knowledge of the nervous system will be summarized.

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