Signal processing and neural computation have separately and significantly influenced many disciplines, but the cross-fertilization of the two fields has begun only recently. Research now shows that each has much to teach the other, as we see highly sophisticated kinds of signal processing and elaborate hierachical levels of neural computation performed side by side in the brain. In New Directions in Statistical Signal Processing, leading researchers from both signal processing and neural computation present new work that aims to promote interaction between the two disciplines.
The annual Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference is the flagship meeting on neural computation. It draws a diverse group of attendees—physicists, neuroscientists, mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientists. The presentations are interdisciplinary, with contributions in algorithms, learning theory, cognitive science, neuroscience, brain imaging, vision, speech and signal processing, reinforcement learning and control, emerging technologies, and applications.
Theoretical neuroscience provides a quantitative basis for describing what nervous systems do, determining how they function, and uncovering the general principles by which they operate. This text introduces the basic mathematical and computational methods of theoretical neuroscience and presents applications in a variety of areas including vision, sensory-motor integration, development, learning, and memory.
Head direction cells—neurons that fire only when an animal orients its head in a certain direction—are found in several different brain areas, with different neurons selective for different head orientations; they are influenced by landmarks as well as motor and vestibular information concerning how the head moves through space. These properties suggest that head direction cells play an important role in determining orientation in space and in navigation.
The annual Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference is the flagship meeting on neural computation. It draws a diverse group of attendees—physicists, neuroscientists, mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientists. The presentations are interdisciplinary, with contributions in algorithms, learning theory, cognitive science, neuroscience, brain imaging, vision, speech and signal processing, reinforcement learning and control, emerging technologies, and applications.
Neuroscience involves the study of the nervous system, and its topics range from genetics to inferential reasoning. At its heart, however, lies a search for understanding how the environment affects the nervous system and how the nervous system, in turn, empowers us to interact with and alter our environment. This empowerment requires motor learning. The Computational Neurobiology of Reaching and Pointing addresses the neural mechanisms of one important form of motor learning.
For years, researchers have used the theoretical tools of engineering to understand neural systems, but much of this work has been conducted in relative isolation. In Neural Engineering, Chris Eliasmith and Charles Anderson provide a synthesis of the disparate approaches current in computational neuroscience, incorporating ideas from neural coding, neural computation, physiology, communications theory, control theory, dynamics, and probability theory. This synthesis, they argue, enables novel theoretical and practical insights into the functioning of neural systems.
The annual Neural Information Processing (NIPS) conference is the flagship meeting on neural computation. It draws a diverse group of attendees—physicists, neuroscientists, mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientists. The presentations are interdisciplinary, with contributions in algorithms, learning theory, cognitive science, neuroscience, brain imaging, vision, speech and signal processing, reinforcement learning and control, emerging technologies, and applications.
McClelland and Rumelhart's Parallel Distributed Processing was the first book to present a definitive account of the newly revived connectionist/neural net paradigm for artificial intelligence and cognitive science. While Neural Computing Architectures addresses the same issues, there is little overlap in the research it reports. These 18 contributions provide a timely and informative overview and synopsis of both pioneering and recent European connectionist research.
Motivated by the remarkable fluidity of memory the way in which items are pulled spontaneously and effortlessly from our memory by vague similarities to what is currently occupying our attention Sparse Distributed Memory presents a mathematically elegant theory of human long term memory.
