Altered sensory input can result in the reorganization of somatosensory maps in the cerebral cortex and thalamus, but the extent to which reorganization occurs at lower levels of the somatosensory system is unknown. In cat dorsal column nuclei (DCN), the injection of local anesthetic into the receptive fields of DCN neurons resulted in the emergence of a new receptive field in all 13 neurons studied. New receptive fields emerged rapidly (within minutes), sometimes accompanied by changes in adaptation rates and stimulus selectivity, suggesting that the new fields arose from the unmasking of previously ineffective inputs. Receptive field reorganization was not imposed by descending cortical inputs to the DCN, because comparable results were obtained in 10 additional cells when the somatosensory and motor cortex were removed before recording. These results suggest that mechanisms underlying somatotopic reorganization exist at the earliest stages of somatosensory processing. Such mechanisms may participate in adaptive responses of the nervous system to injury or continuously changing sensory stimulation.

The Mesolithic settlement at Morton lies some six miles north-north-west of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland (fig. 1). The area around the site, north-eastern Fife, is surrounded on three sides by water, and projects as a blunt peninsula into the North Sea. The river Eden and the Firth of Tay serve as southern and northern boundaries of this peninsula, which consists today principally of the wind-deposited sands of Tentsmuir. The area of Tentsmuir, now afforested, is one of the relatively few regions in Britain where land is building up into the North Sea, and this process has been in action for many centuries (Sissons, 1967).The Tentsmuir Sands are a prolific source of later prehistoric and early historic finds, the earliest yet known being of the late third millennium B.C. In February 1957, while searching for such material on Tentsmuir, Mr R. Candow of Tayport collected some flints from molehills and other exposures on the high ground of the ‘Old Quarry’ field at Morton Farm (National Grid Reference NO 467257). Surface collections continued to be made until 1963 when excavations of the site were undertaken by Mr Candow in collaboration with Dundee Museum and Art Gallery (Candow, 1966). A total of 41 trenches were excavated between May 1963 and April 1967, and these are shown on the plan of site A (fig. 4, no. 1–41). In November 1967, site B in the same field was discovered and partially excavated (fig. 29, no. 51), before work was suspended and the writer was invited to continue the investigations.

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Launched in 2010, the Google Books Ngram Viewer offers a novel means of tracing cultural change over time. This digital tool offers exciting possibilities for cultural psychology by rendering questions about variation across historical time more quantitative. Psychologists have begun to use the viewer to bolster theories about a historical shift in the United States from a more collectivist to individualist form of selfhood and society. I raise 4 methodological cautions about the Ngram Viewer's use among psychologists: (a) the extent to which print culture can be taken to represent culture as a whole, (b) the difference between viewing the past in terms of trends versus events, (c) assumptions about the stability of a word's meaning over time, and (d) inconsistencies in the scales and ranges used to measure change over time. The aim is to foster discussion about the standards of evidence needed for incorporating historical big data into empirical research.