Great Power Technology

Ye Zhou raised his head. He saw a small sign on the wall of the operating room - or laboratory, and there was a word written in Chinese on the sign:

Eye of Heaven.

Looking closer, Ye Zhou found that in front of him was an extremely complicated and somewhat funny operating table.

It is complicated because, in addition to the operating table, shadowless lamp and other vital sign monitoring instruments in the scene, there are many other monitoring units set up next to the operating table, and the screens of these monitoring units are all full of Ye Zhou complete images. Incomprehensible symbols and data.

It was funny because the person lying on the operating table was not a human, but an obese cat that had obviously been put down by anesthesia, grinning and sticking out its tongue.

If Ye Zhou didn't know that this simulation was related to the AES system, he would probably think that this was the scene of a high-end cat sterilization surgery.

"Is the optic nerve signal sensor connected?"

The middle-aged doctor's question pulled Ye Zhou out of his thoughts. He looked around in confusion and was about to answer when another young doctor in front of him who seemed to specialize in operating monitoring systems said:

"Connected, everything is ready to go."

"Okay, then get ready to wake up. Ye Zhou, wake up the cat."

"Huh? Me? How to wake up?"

"Whatever you do, just let it open its eyes."

Hearing this, Ye Zhou reluctantly stretched out his hand and tentatively rubbed the belly of the cat on the operating table, but the cat did not respond at all and even twitched a few times comfortably.

After hesitating for a moment, Ye Zhou increased the strength of his hand and pinched one of the cat's front paws on the operating table. After a moment, the cat finally opened its eyes leisurely.

Probably because the effects of anesthesia have not worn off, the cat's eyes were wandering around, but its body was still limp and weak. Seeing this scene, the middle-aged doctor on the side quickly said:

"Okay, just wake up. Ye Zhou, bring the picture album next to you."

Ye Zhou turned around and saw that there were indeed a bunch of picture albums on the table next to the operating table, and those picture albums were all filled with various graphics, dots, and a small number of objects that existed in reality.

As the memory flow continued to flow in, Ye Zhou finally understood the purpose of this so-called operation, or experiment, and the role he played in this experiment.

This is the legendary cat brain visual nerve experiment. In the 1960s, this experiment led by China revealed several major problems in the biological visual system, and won two Nobel Prizes for these discoveries.

In this experiment, researchers found that visual cells in the visual cortex are divided into three categories, responsible for simple, complex and ultra-complex visual signal processing. They also began to realize that human visual processing starts from simple large cells.

In other words, humans first learn to identify the edges and corners of things, and then begin to learn a series of deep contents such as color, light and shade, background distinction, etc.

This theory laid the foundation for subsequent machine vision research. It can even be said that the most critical step for humans to realize "artificial vision" was taken from here.

Now, Ye Zhou's role is that of the assistant in this experiment.

Looking at the serious look on the middle-aged doctor's face, Ye Zhou quickly put a fence around the cat's head specifically to block the view. Then, he raised the picture album in his hand to the cat's head, and another young doctor immediately started recording. Active signals of nerves in various locations in the cat’s brain.

"Okay, this picture is enough, next one."

"The response is not strong, what kind of picture is this?"

Ye Zhou picked up the picture album, took a look at it, and replied:

“Abstract gouache painting—just a bunch of messy colors.”

The young doctor gave him a strange look and said:

"This is 'Color 002'. Can you look at the number on the back and describe it?"

Ye Zhou smiled sheepishly, followed his instructions, and continued to change the picture album in his hand.

"This one has a good response. What is this?"

"It's line 004."

"Okay, line 004, record it first, then repeat the test a few times. The next one - measure the light and dark."

Ye Zhou selected content that met the requirements from the picture album in his hand. After raising it to the cat's head, the young doctor frowned slightly and replied:

"It's a little stronger than color, but the intensity is limited, far less than lines. Let's go back to lines, starting from simple to complex, and test them one by one."

"clear."

Ye Zhou replied simply and neatly. As the experiment continued, his movements became more and more skillful, and he even began to have time to observe the changes in various curves and data on the display screen with the young doctor.

Just like the results of memory flowing to him, in this experiment, the cat's visual feedback strictly adhered to the intensity sequence from lines, to light and dark, to color, and for further feedback on subjects under complex backgrounds, Gradient feedback delays of different sensory cells and nerves.

"80ms after visual triggering, the visual signal will be reflected in the multivariable response pattern of the scalp. After 300ms, the perception of visual objects begins to break away from feed-forward visual object information and relies on external background scenes."

"Looking at the time matrix, we set up visual information decoding monitoring at the time interval from visual trigger to 600ms. The results show that the perception accuracy reaches its peak around 200ms."

"This is basically the same result as we predicted in the early stage, which can support the conclusion."

After the young doctor finished speaking, the middle-aged doctor beside Ye Zhou nodded and replied:

"Then continue to test a few more times. If the changes are within the error range, start outputting conclusions."

The young doctor hummed and continued to study the results on the screen intently, but Ye Zhou suddenly became distracted.

This conclusion seems to be a bit too simple.

Although it could be explained that they had conducted a large number of tests before this experiment, he always felt that under such a complex and precise experiment, if they could only draw these two conclusions, it seemed that it was not the limit of this experiment.

He carefully looked at the historical data displayed on the screen. Although he did not know the underlying principles, if he wanted to analyze the differences and patterns, he was definitely better than anyone present because of his talent as a "decision maker" Be strong.

He tried to continue changing the picture album in his hand, and the monitoring values ​​on the screen kept changing. After repeating the cycle several times, Ye Zhou suddenly discovered a pattern.

Every time the screen is switched, the sensory signal of the visual nerve will jump like a "double click".

The more complex the picture, the more obvious the signal jumps.

This is not a phenomenon that can be explained by the "three-layer visual cell" theory at all, because in every neural area, such beatings are synchronized.

Ye Zhou didn't know the principle, so he directly told his findings. After hearing his analysis, the two doctors looked at the screen carefully and finally nodded.

"Indeed, Ye Zhou is right. We have always regarded this kind of beating as a regular disturbance, but now it seems that there should be some cause for this kind of beating."

"The beating regularity is too strong. Could it be that every nerve cell has two sets of sensing units?"

"Continue to test, test with complex pictures!"

Hearing the doctor's words, Ye Zhou quickly picked up the picture album in his hand, and the experiment that had come to an end started again, and this time, what they were about to face was a brand new phenomenon.

"It can be determined that the signal beating in the same area should come from the same nerve cell."

"Then our early theory may need to be further improved, not only the cell layering, but also the layering of individual nerve cells."

"I think it is very possible that ultra-complex perception is not accomplished by clusters of cells, but by single cells."

"Is it possible that each cell will be divided into two parts? One part is responsible for sensing, and the other part is responsible for integration? We have to continue testing."

After listening to his words, Ye Zhou was about to answer, but the scene in front of him gradually darkened.

This stage of simulation is over again.

But the simulation is still going on, which makes Ye Zhou relieved, because it means that until now, he has not done anything wrong.