Horace Barlow
Encyclopedia
Horace Basil Barlow FRS (born 8 December 1921) is a British visual neuroscientist.
Barlow is the son of the civil servant Sir Alan Barlow
and his wife Lady Nora, (née Darwin)
, and thus the great-grandson of Charles Darwin
(see Darwin — Wedgwood family
). He earned an M.D. at Harvard University, 1946
In 1953 Barlow discovered that the frog
brain has neurons which fire in response to specific visual stimuli. This was a precursor to the work of Hubel and Wiesel
on visual receptive fields in the visual cortex. He has made a long study of visual inhibition, the process whereby a neuron firing in response to one group of retinal cells can inhibit the firing of another neuron; this allows perception of relative contrast.
In 1961 Barlow wrote a seminal article where he asked what the computational aims of the visual system are. He concluded that one of the main aims of visual processing is the reduction of redundancy. While the brightnesses of neighbouring points in images are usually very similar, the retina
reduces this redundancy. His work thus was central to the field of statistics of natural scenes that relates the statistics of images of real world scenes to the properties of the nervous system.
Barlow and his co-workers also did substantial work in the field of factorial code
s. The goal was to encode images with statistically redundant components or pixels such that the code components are statistically independent. Such codes are hard to find but highly useful for purposes of image classification etc.
Barlow is a fellow of Trinity College
, University of Cambridge
. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1969 and was awarded their Royal Medal
in 1993. He received the 1993 Australia Prize
for his research into the mechanisms of visual perception and the 2009 Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience from the Society for Neuroscience.
Barlow has been married twice and fathered seven children. In 1954 he married Ruthala Salaman, daughter of M.H. Salaman. They had four daughters. They were divorced in 1970. In 1980 he married Miranda, daughter of John Weston Smith. They had one son, Oscar, and two daughters, Ida and Pepita.
Barlow is the son of the civil servant Sir Alan Barlow
Alan Barlow
Sir James Alan Noel Barlow, 2nd Baronet GCB KBE FSA was a British civil servant and collector of Islamic and Chinese art.- Biography :...
and his wife Lady Nora, (née Darwin)
Nora Barlow
Emma Nora Barlow was the granddaughter of the British naturalist Charles Darwin, who edited and published previously unseen examples of her grandfather's work.- Biography :...
, and thus the great-grandson of Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
(see Darwin — Wedgwood family
Darwin — Wedgwood family
The Darwin–Wedgwood family is actually two interrelated English families, descended from the prominent 18th century doctor, Erasmus Darwin, and Josiah Wedgwood, founder of the pottery firm, Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, the most notable member of which was Charles Darwin...
). He earned an M.D. at Harvard University, 1946
In 1953 Barlow discovered that the frog
Frog
Frogs are amphibians in the order Anura , formerly referred to as Salientia . Most frogs are characterized by a short body, webbed digits , protruding eyes and the absence of a tail...
brain has neurons which fire in response to specific visual stimuli. This was a precursor to the work of Hubel and Wiesel
Torsten Wiesel
Torsten Nils Wiesel was a Swedish co-recipient with David H. Hubel of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system; the prize was shared with Roger W...
on visual receptive fields in the visual cortex. He has made a long study of visual inhibition, the process whereby a neuron firing in response to one group of retinal cells can inhibit the firing of another neuron; this allows perception of relative contrast.
In 1961 Barlow wrote a seminal article where he asked what the computational aims of the visual system are. He concluded that one of the main aims of visual processing is the reduction of redundancy. While the brightnesses of neighbouring points in images are usually very similar, the retina
Retina
The vertebrate retina is a light-sensitive tissue lining the inner surface of the eye. The optics of the eye create an image of the visual world on the retina, which serves much the same function as the film in a camera. Light striking the retina initiates a cascade of chemical and electrical...
reduces this redundancy. His work thus was central to the field of statistics of natural scenes that relates the statistics of images of real world scenes to the properties of the nervous system.
Barlow and his co-workers also did substantial work in the field of factorial code
Factorial code
Most real world data sets consist of data vectors whose individual components are not statistically independent, that is, they are redundant in the statistical sense. Then it is desirable to create a factorial code of the data, i...
s. The goal was to encode images with statistically redundant components or pixels such that the code components are statistically independent. Such codes are hard to find but highly useful for purposes of image classification etc.
Barlow is a fellow of Trinity College
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
, University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1969 and was awarded their Royal Medal
Royal Medal
The Royal Medal, also known as The Queen's Medal, is a silver-gilt medal awarded each year by the Royal Society, two for "the most important contributions to the advancement of natural knowledge" and one for "distinguished contributions in the applied sciences" made within the Commonwealth of...
in 1993. He received the 1993 Australia Prize
Australia Prize
The Australia Prize was Australia's pre-eminent prize for scientific research from 1990 until 2000, when it was replaced by the Prime Minister's Prizes for Science. The award was international, 10 of the 28 recipients were not Australians.-Recipients:...
for his research into the mechanisms of visual perception and the 2009 Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience from the Society for Neuroscience.
Barlow has been married twice and fathered seven children. In 1954 he married Ruthala Salaman, daughter of M.H. Salaman. They had four daughters. They were divorced in 1970. In 1980 he married Miranda, daughter of John Weston Smith. They had one son, Oscar, and two daughters, Ida and Pepita.
Selected References
- H. B. Barlow. Possible principles underlying the transformation of sensory messages. Sensory Communication, pp. 217-234, 1961
- H. B. Barlow. Single units and sensation: A neuron doctrine for perceptual psychology? Perception 1(4) 371 – 394, 1972
- H. B. Barlow, T. P. Kaushal, and G. J. Mitchison. Finding minimum entropy codes. Neural Computation, 1:412-423, 1989.
External links
- List and full text of Horace Barlow publications
- Australia PrizeAustralia PrizeThe Australia Prize was Australia's pre-eminent prize for scientific research from 1990 until 2000, when it was replaced by the Prime Minister's Prizes for Science. The award was international, 10 of the 28 recipients were not Australians.-Recipients:...
Biography of Barlow - Horace Barlow in Neurotree