We Know It When We See It: What the Neurobiology of Vision Tells Us

"Spotting a face in a crowd is so easy, you take it for granted. But how you do it is one of science's great mysteries. Vision is involved in nearly a third of everything a brain does and explaining how it works reveals more than just how we see. It also tells us how the brain processes information - how it perceives, learns and remembers. In We Know It When We See It, pioneering neuroscientist Richard Masland covers everything from what happens when light hits your retina, to the increasingly sophisticated nerve nets that turn that light into knowledge, to what a computer algorithm must be able to do before it can truly be called 'intelligent'. It is a profound yet accessible investigation into how our bodies make sense of the world."

Richard Masland was the David Glendenning Cogan Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology and Professor of Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. He was previously Director of Research at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, the world's largest vision research institute. He died in 2019, and is remembered for his groundbreaking contributions to the study of neural networks and to the reversal of blindness. This is his last book.