Identification and Classification
One problem of neuromorphology is because it has not to describe one object, the brain, but an average brain. This justifies an extensive use of statistics.
Tyner (1975) and Rowe and Stone (1977)have analysed the conceptual bases to be respected in the process of neuronal classification. They insisted on the necessity of separating classification and identification.
Classifications must be based on multifactorial techniques and to be hierarchical (following the bicentennial animal taxonomy). When many namings or identifications were done on the characteristics of the soma, it appeared clear that only a quantitative study of complete dendritic arborisations was able to offer a means for a neutral neuronal taxonomy. A particular kind of a group of neuron in a localized part of the brain in one animal species is called a neuronal species. When neurons of about the same morphology is observed at the same place in another animal species, it is a neuronal genus. There are also neuronal families and so on. For example spiny neurons of the striatum of macaque are one species. Along with that of man and/or other species they form a genus. Statistical comparisons allow to analyse what remained the same or what has changed in evolution.
Starting from objectively defined neurons, it became possible to constitute neuronal sets.
Read more about this topic: Theoretical Neuromorphology, History
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“Introspection is self-improvement and therefore introspection is self-centeredness. Awareness is not self-improvement. On the contrary, it is the ending of the self, of the “I,” with all its peculiar idiosyncrasies, memories, demands, and pursuits. In introspection there is identification and condemnation. In awareness there is no condemnation or identification; therefore, there is no self-improvement. There is a vast difference between the two.”
—Jiddu Krishnamurti (b. 1895)