These statistics of the visible world are all learned by experience. Raise someone in a world with no vertical lines, and they will not be able to see a vertical object placed before them.10 Raise someone with one eye closed, and when reopened that eye will see nothing.11 In both cases, the neurons in visual cortex have not been able to learn the statistics of the world—deprived of the experience of vertical lines, there are no neurons tuned to vertical lines; deprived of the experience of one eye, there are no neurons tuned to the view from that eye. Neurons learn about edges, corners, and
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