This person is either David Hubel or Torsten Wiesel and has an anesthetized cat with it's eyes pointed toward this screen. An electrode is placed in the occipital cortex in the first part of the neocortex that receives visual information from the eyes via the thalamus. This electrode picks up the electrical signal of an action potential, which signifies the information that a particular neuron in this area is passing on to other neurons.
Here are more cool videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPQAtkxn3tY&feature=related
I thought these were very interesting in class today. I loved the fact that they discovered this by mistake. In the visual cortex they were able to hear the random firing that was sensitive to light. The movement of the light and of the glass object is what caused the firing. It amazed me that they actually could hear the neuron firing in the brain when the movement occurred. I thought this was very interesting and intriuging. I also felt bad for the cat!
I also found these videos interesting. It definitely helped me conceptualize the idea that each cell is responsible for responding to a specific stimulus. The firing rate is faster when it is something they are looking for in the visual field. Such as a bar in the correct orientation or the movement of a dot crossing their visual path.
Just goes to show what Bob Ross would call "happy accidents" are capable of.
An interesting side note that i herd from my cog psych professor. While Hubel and Wiesel won the Nobel prize for this research, there weren't considered psychologists. To this day no psychologist has ever won the Nobel prize.