242 Information Storage and Neural Control 



Mary A. B. Brazier (Los Angeles, California) : They were 

 certainly not absolutely random. On the contrary, the intervals 

 between stimuli were as constant as we could make tliem. In an 

 experiment such as tliis, there is very great difficulty for the 

 neurophysiologist because the responses depend so much on the 

 state of the animal. Although one would like to have a longer 

 interval between stimuli, it is, in my experience, almost impossible 

 to hold an animal in the same stage of the sleep-wakefulness 

 continuum for as many stimuli as we use, if the interval between 

 flashes is longer than one second. 



L. M. N. Bach (New Orleans, Louisiana) : I am curious about 

 the disappearance of the second component in tlie centrum 

 medianum response with repetitive stimulation as a possible 

 inverted index of post-tetanic potentiation. Do you consider it 

 a testable proposition that the disappearance of the second com- 

 ponent could be correlated with post-tetanic potentiation, or do 

 you consider tliat there is no relationship at all? 



Brazier: It should be testable, but it is rather difficult to design 

 an experiment in wliich to test this. 



Gregory Bateson (Palo Alto, California): Would you have 

 expected the part of the signal which denotes novelty to follow 

 the other two components? Would it not have been a better 

 arrangement to have the system, when it had diagnosed novelty, 

 transmit the information ahead of the other components of the 

 signal? 



Brazier: I had no "expectation," tliough now that you raise 

 the question, would you not expect the brain to need to receive 

 the signal before it could assess its novelty? What you have sug- 

 gested would make a very good design for a communication 

 system, although the nervous system does not appear to be de- 

 signed in this manner. 



