Friday, July 03, 2009

The non-existing road to nowhere.

In one classic experiment, the Nobel Prize winners David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel covered one eye of newborn kittens. The kittens continued to do all the normal things that kittens do, but one eye rather than two. After several months, the scientist uncovered the eye and looked a the connections between the two eyes and the brain. The surprise was that if the eye had been covered beyond a particular amount of time, it was effectively blind. It was not connected to the brain. This despite the fact that the eye was perfectly normal from an optical point of view. - The Scientist in the Crib. 183.

Connections without stimulation die out. This probably holds true for social networking as well.

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