Most practical applications of artificial neural networks are based on a computational model involving the propagation of continuous variables from one processing unit to the next. In recent years, data from neurobiological experiments have made it increasingly clear that biological neural networks, which communicate through pulses, use the timing of the pulses to transmit information and perform computation.
Because neurons and glia in culture are remarkably similar to those in situ, culture systems make it possible to identify significant cell interactions and to elucidate their mechanisms. This book is in many ways a do-it-yourself manual for culturing nerve cells, complete with recipes and protocols. But it also provides an understanding of the principles behind the protocols. In effect the contributors invite you into their labs and provide much of the information you would obtain from such a visit.
Rethinking Innateness asks the question, "What does it really mean to say that a behavior is innate?" The authors describe a new framework in which interactions, occurring at all levels, give rise to emergent forms and behaviors. These outcomes often may be highly constrained and universal, yet are not themselves directly contained in the genes in any domain-specific way.
Because memory enters into virtually all cognition, it is impossible to design cognitive models that view memory as a self-contained cognitive faculty. Instead, memory researchers focus on specific aspects of memory. Taking this regional approach to memory, the chapters of this volume evaluate models of the short-term retention of knowledge, conceptual knowledge, autobiographical knowledge, transitory mental representations, the neurobiological basis of memory, and age-related changes in human memory.
In Neural Organization, Arbib, Érdi, and Szentágothai integrate structural, functional, and dynamical approaches to the interaction of brain models and neurobiologcal experiments. Both structure-based "bottom-up" and function-based "top-down" models offer coherent concepts by which to evaluate the experimental data. The goal of this book is to point out the advantages of a multidisciplinary, multistrategied approach to the brain.
The thirty original contributions in this book provide an up-to-date, interdisciplinary account of current research activity in all aspects of excitatory amino acid transmitters, particularly glutamate and aspartate, in the context of the structure and function of the cerebral cortex in health and in disease.It has recently become clear that the excitatory amino acids and their receptors are critically linked to normal processes of development and synaptic transmission, and to learning and memory, as well as to identifiable disease processes such as Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, and cortic
Between the ages of eighteen months and six years, children acquire about eight words each day without specific instruction or correction, simply through the course of natural conversational interactions. This book brings together investigations from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds (with an emphasis on linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computer science) to examine how young children acquire the vocabulary of their native tongue with such rapidity, and with virtually no errors along the way.
Drawing on his considerable experience as a neuroscientist and clinical neurologist, Ira Black systematically disentangles the labyrinth of brain and mind in a new concept of mind that relates environment, brain genes, molecular symbols, behavior and mentation. He describes the unity of brain, mind, and experience with singular clarity, showing how mental function, brain function, and biologic information are now comprehensible in molecular terms.
