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108). The basic idea was that the brain contains some such scanning mecha-
nism, which continually scans over its sensory inputs for features of interest,
objects, or patterns in the world or in configurations internal to itself.
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One of the tortoise's most striking features, the rotation of the front forks
and the photocell, was thus an implementation of this cybernetic notion of
scanning. And beyond that, scanning had a further degree of significance
for Walter. Craik visited Walter in the summer of 1944 to use the Burden's
automatic frequency analyzers, and from that time onward both of them were
drawn to the idea that the brainwaves recorded in Walter's EEGs were some-
how integral to the brain's scanning mechanism (Hayward 2001b, 302). The
basic alpha rhythm, for example, which stopped when the eyes were opened,
could be interpreted as a search for visual information, a search “which
relaxes when a pattern is found,” just as the tortoise's photocell stopped going
Figure 3.6.
The mating dance. Source: Holland 1996.
