Single Cells versus Neuronal Assemblies

I wrote a paper almost 20 years ago (Barlow 1972) that was intended to promote the approach to brain function at the level of single neurons, and to act as an antidote to the view that, since there are so many cells in the brain, it is useless to consider what a single one of them does. Though it was aimed at those who advocated the “mass action” approach, in which one records evoked potentials in the hope that the averaged activity of many cells will be meaningful, quite a lot of what I said still seems to me correct and relevant, though what I then regarded as the unenlightened opposition now tends to put its faith in “neuronal assemblies” and “synfire groups” instead of “mass action”. Perhaps its therefore worth raising some of the points again.