Brain Computations: What and How

by Edmund T. Rolls

Overview

In order to understand how the brain works, it is essential to know what is computed by different brain systems, and how those computations are performed. Brain Computations: What and How elucidates what is computed in different brain systems and describes current computational approaches and models of how each of these brain systems computes. This approach has enormous potential for helping us understand ourselves better in health. Potential applications of this understanding are to the treatment of the brain in disease, as well as to artificial intelligence, which will benefit from knowledge of how the brain performs many of its extraordinarily impressive functions. Pioneering in its approach, Brain Computations: What and How will be of interest to all scientists interested in brain function and how the brain works, whether they are from neuroscience, or from medical sciences including neurology and psychiatry, or from the area of computational science including machine learning and artificial intelligence, or from areas such as theoretical physics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192644473
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	12/08/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	944
File size:	17 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Professor Edmund T. Rolls performs full-time research at the Oxford Centre for Computational Neuroscience, and at the University of Warwick, and has performed research and teaching for many years as Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, and as Fellow and Tutor of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. His research links computational neuroscience approaches to neurophysiological, human functional neuroimaging and neuropsychological studies in order to provide a fundamental basis for understanding human brain function and its disorders.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. The ventral visual system3. The dorsal visual system4. The taste and flavour system5. The olfactory system6. The somatosensory system7. The auditory system8. The temporal cortex9. The hippocampus, memory, and spatial function10. The parietal cortex, spatial functions, and navigation11. The orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, reward value, and emotion12. The cingulate cortex13. The motor cortical areas14. The basal ganglia15. Cerebellar cortex16. The prefrontal cortex17. Language and syntax in the brain18. Noise in the cortex, stability, psychiatric disease, and aging19. Computations by different types of brain, and by artificial neural systemsAppendix A: Introduction to linear algebra for neural networksAppendix B: Neuronal network modelsAppendix C: Information theory, and neuronal encodingAppendix D: Simulation software for neuronal network models, and information analysis of neuronal encoding

Editorial Reviews

"This neuronal network approach stands in contrast to connectionist approaches and also focuses exclusively on higher primate and human modeling. Helpful chapter highlights and several practical appendixes are provided, and the bibliography is excellent." — H. Storl, Augustana College (IL), CHOICE

"This "bottom-up" approach to data-driven neuroscientific discovery serves as the perfect primer for those who study brain sciences, cognitive sciences, artificial intelligence, neuro-engineering, neuropsychology, and empirically oriented philosophy." — H. Storl, CHOICE

"Brain Computations is the first complete attempt to summarize our current knowledge about computation in the brain, at a level a graduate can understand. ... This is a biologically grounded, full systems neuroscience textbook-which makes it one of a kind. ... Hippocampal memories, action selection in the striatum, orbitofrontal reward representations, emotion in the limbic system, cerebellar motor control, parietal spatial coordinate transforms, place fields, and posterior visual object recognition-all these can emerge from relatively simple rules. This is Rolls' unspoken but substantial grand unifying theory. (full review https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awab477)" — Brain

"He concludes with 13 principles about how information in encoded in neural networks. This is almost the Holy Grail of neuroscience, the language of neurons, what makes us what we are. Yet, these ideas are presented in a simple unassuming scientific language ..." — Nikolaos C. Aggelopoulos, Neurosurgery

From the Publisher