Some Publications by Ralph Linsker

R. Linsker, R. Srinivasan, J. J. Wynne, and D. Alonso,“Far-ultraviolet laser ablation of atherosclerotic lesions,” Lasers in Surgery and Medicine 4:201-206 (1984). Introduced the field of ultraviolet laser angioplasty; first demonstration of laser removal of tissue from blood vessels without thermal damage.

R. Linsker, “From basic network principles to neural architecture” (series):
From Basic Network Principles to Neural Architecture: Emergence of Spatial-Opponent Cells
From Basic Network Principles to Neural Architecture: Emergence of Orientation-Selective Cells
From Basic Network Principles to Neural Architecture: Emergence of Orientation Columns
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 83: 7508-12, 8390-94, 8779-83 (1986). Discovered that a simple learning rule, with minimally structured and biologically plausible input activity, can induce the development and self-organization of feature-analyzing model neurons in a multilayer network. Provided a way to account for the development of Hubel-Wiesel visual orientation-selective cells, discovered experimentally in the 1960s-70s.

R. Linsker, “Self-organization in a perceptual network,” Computer 21(3): 105-117 (March 1988). Introduced the “infomax” principle for neural systems; this states that the Shannon mutual information between input and output of a sensory processing stage should be maximized subject to constraints. This principle has subsequently been used to account for a variety of features in biological sensory processing systems, and as the basis for an information-theoretic method for separating mixtures of statistically independent sources.

R. Linsker, R. L. Garwin, H. Chernoff, P. Horowitz, and N. F. Ramsey, “Synchronization of the acoustic evidence in the assassination of President Kennedy,” Science and Justice 45(4): 207-26 (2005). Disproved a recent assertion that the alleged “shot” sounds attributed to a “second gunman” occurred at the exact moment of the assassination. Our new results, consistent with the main conclusion of the 1982 National Research Council Report, show that these sounds in fact occurred approximately a minute following the assassination.

G. Grinstein and R. Linsker, “Comments on a derivation and application of the ‘maximum entropy production’ principle,” Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical 40(31): 9717-20 (2007). Showed that a recent influential claim – of a proof that a broad class of physical systems far from equilibrium obey a principle of “maximum entropy production (MEP)” – is false. This principle has been used or proposed to predict the behavior of broad classes of hard-to-analyze systems, including climate change and other planetary-scale phenomena.

G. Grinstein and R. Linsker, “Synchronous neural activity in scale-free network models versus random network models,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 102: 9948-53 (2005). Synchronous firing peaks at levels greatly exceeding background, and dominated by a small number of active neurons, were recently reported in neocortical tissue. We showed, using a simple dynamical model of neural activity, that networks having a power-law (“scale-free”) distribution of node connectivity readily exhibit such synchronous firing behavior, whereas random networks do not. Our results suggest that network topology may play an important role in determining the nature and magnitude of synchronous neural activity.