From grandmother cells to tales of a great-grandfather

Horace Barlow is a British visual neuroscientist who has done much work towards understanding human vision and consciousness, beginning with his discovery in 1953 that the frog brain includes neurons which fire only in response to specific visual stimuli. He is currently working on research involving the role of motion blur in helping humans to determine the direction of motion of moving images. This year he has also participated in many functions related to the Darwin Bicentennial, as he is one of Charles Darwin’s great-grandsons. He is a fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge and received the 1993 Australia Prize for his research into the mechanisms of visual perception.