Development of Functional Connections in the Mammalian Visual System

Bewilderment at the complexity of nature reaches the level of incredulity when we consider the workings of the brain. With this curious organ an animal plans its movements, decides on strategies of behavior, regulates its internal and to some extent its external environment, and, not least, it apprehends the world around it. Any one of these functions would tax the resources of a computer many orders of magnitude larger than the brain, which performs all of them. But the brain has advantages over any computer: its component neurons are tiny and vastly outnumber the electronic components in a computer; the connections between them are of enormously greater complexity than any computer's wiring; and finally the connectivity itself is capable of being modified and adapted in response to the experience of the brain's owner, and this process may maximize the construction or preservation of useful connections.
(The International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) held a symposium in October 1974 in New Delhi.)