Large-scale Neuronal Theories of the Brain

Large-scale Neuronal Theories of the Brain PDF Author: Christof Koch
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262111836
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
This book originated at a small and informal workshop held in December of 1992 in Idyllwild, a relatively secluded resort village situated amid forests in the San Jacinto Mountains above Palm Springs in Southern California. Eighteen colleagues from a broad range of disciplines, including biophysics, electrophysiology, neuroanatomy, psychophysics, clinical studies, mathematics and computer vision, discussed 'Large Scale Models of the Brain, ' that is, theories and models that cover a broad range of phenomena, including early and late vision, various memory systems, selective attention, and the neuronal code underlying figure-ground segregation and awareness (for a brief summary of this meeting, see Stevens 1993). The bias in the selection of the speakers toward researchers in the area of visual perception reflects both the academic background of one of the organizers as well as the (relative) more mature status of vision compared with other modalities. This should not be surprising given the emphasis we humans place on'seeing' for orienting ourselves, as well as the intense scrutiny visual processes have received due to their obvious usefullness in military, industrial, and robotic applications. JMD.

Large-scale Neuronal Theories of the Brain

Large-scale Neuronal Theories of the Brain PDF Author: Christof Koch
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262111836
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book originated at a small and informal workshop held in December of 1992 in Idyllwild, a relatively secluded resort village situated amid forests in the San Jacinto Mountains above Palm Springs in Southern California. Eighteen colleagues from a broad range of disciplines, including biophysics, electrophysiology, neuroanatomy, psychophysics, clinical studies, mathematics and computer vision, discussed 'Large Scale Models of the Brain, ' that is, theories and models that cover a broad range of phenomena, including early and late vision, various memory systems, selective attention, and the neuronal code underlying figure-ground segregation and awareness (for a brief summary of this meeting, see Stevens 1993). The bias in the selection of the speakers toward researchers in the area of visual perception reflects both the academic background of one of the organizers as well as the (relative) more mature status of vision compared with other modalities. This should not be surprising given the emphasis we humans place on'seeing' for orienting ourselves, as well as the intense scrutiny visual processes have received due to their obvious usefullness in military, industrial, and robotic applications. JMD.

Theories of Large-scale Neural Recordings

Theories of Large-scale Neural Recordings PDF Author: Peiran Gao
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Rapid technology developments in neuroscience are enabling us to record from an ever increasing number of neurons from the brain. However, with the deluge of experimental data, our ability to extract simple yet fundamental understandings of the neural mechanisms underlying behavior and cognition is hampered by a lack of theoretically principled data analytics procedures. In the present work, we outline a set of theoretical frameworks that begins to address this challenge. First, we focus on the analysis of trial-averaged data obtained over experimental repetitions of tightly controlled behaviors. We start by developing a theory of neural dimensionality, which explains the prevalence of low-dimensional dynamic portraits observed in system neuroscience. We then connect the experimental act of recording a random subset of neurons to the mathematical theories of random projection, and illustrate how we might understand anything about the brain given the infinitesimal fractional of behaviorally relevant neurons observed. The second part of the thesis addresses the analyses of single-trial neural data collected during potentially more complex or naturalistic behaviors that may not be repeatable. We explore the effects of trial-to-trial variability and neuronal noise in the context of several analytically tractable generative data models covering linear and nonlinear stimulus-response mappings as well as static and dynamic latent states. We derive exhaustively the functional dependencies of commonly applied analytics procedures' performances on the number of recorded neurons, the number of trials and other model specific parameters. For each of the theoretical puzzles addressed in this thesis, we formulate the question with mathematical precision, derive quantitative predictions testable against simulations and/or neural data, and provide guidelines for the interpretation of past results as well as the design of future experiments.

Micro-, Meso- and Macro-Dynamics of the Brain

Micro-, Meso- and Macro-Dynamics of the Brain PDF Author: György Buzsáki
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319288024
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
This book brings together leading investigators who represent various aspects of brain dynamics with the goal of presenting state-of-the-art current progress and address future developments. The individual chapters cover several fascinating facets of contemporary neuroscience from elementary computation of neurons, mesoscopic network oscillations, internally generated assembly sequences in the service of cognition, large-scale neuronal interactions within and across systems, the impact of sleep on cognition, memory, motor-sensory integration, spatial navigation, large-scale computation and consciousness. Each of these topics require appropriate levels of analyses with sufficiently high temporal and spatial resolution of neuronal activity in both local and global networks, supplemented by models and theories to explain how different levels of brain dynamics interact with each other and how the failure of such interactions results in neurologic and mental disease. While such complex questions cannot be answered exhaustively by a dozen or so chapters, this volume offers a nice synthesis of current thinking and work-in-progress on micro-, meso- and macro- dynamics of the brain.

The Mindful Brain

The Mindful Brain PDF Author: Gerald M. Edelman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262550075
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 107

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Book Description
A proposal by two eminent biological scientists for a mechanism whereby mind becomes manifest from the operations of brain tissue. This significant contribution to neuroscience consists of two papers, the first by Mountcastle an, the second by Edelman. Between them, they examine from different but complementary directions the relationships that connect the higher brain—memory, learning, perception, thinking—with what goes on at the most basic levels of neural activity, with particular stress on the role of local neuronal circuits.Edelman's major hypothesis is that "the conscious state results from phasic reentrant signaling occurring in parallel processes that involve associations between stored patterns and current sensory or internal input." This selective process occurs by the polling of degenerate primary repertoires of neuronal groups that are formed during embryogenesis and development. Edelman's theory extrapolates to the brain the selectionistic immunological theories for which he was awarded the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Mountcastle's paper reviews what is known about the actual structure of various parts of the neo cortex. He relates the large entities of the neocortex to their component modules—the local neuronal circuits—and shows how the complex interrelationships of such a distributed system can yield dynamic distributed functioning. There are strong conceptual parallels between Mountcastle's idea of cortical columns and their functional subunits and Edelman's concept of populations of neurons functioning as processors in a brain system based on selectional rather than instructional principles. These parallels are traced and put into perspective in Francis Schmitt's Introduction.

Information Theory in Neuroscience

Information Theory in Neuroscience PDF Author: Stefano Panzeri
Publisher: MDPI
ISBN: 3038976644
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
As the ultimate information processing device, the brain naturally lends itself to being studied with information theory. The application of information theory to neuroscience has spurred the development of principled theories of brain function, and has led to advances in the study of consciousness, as well as to the development of analytical techniques to crack the neural code—that is, to unveil the language used by neurons to encode and process information. In particular, advances in experimental techniques enabling the precise recording and manipulation of neural activity on a large scale now enable for the first time the precise formulation and the quantitative testing of hypotheses about how the brain encodes and transmits the information used for specific functions across areas. This Special Issue presents twelve original contributions on novel approaches in neuroscience using information theory, and on the development of new information theoretic results inspired by problems in neuroscience.

The Neuron and the Mind

The Neuron and the Mind PDF Author: William R. Uttal
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317208099
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
This book, a companion to William R. Uttal’s earlier work on macrotheories theories of mind-brain relationships, reviews another set of theories—those based on microneuronal measurements. Microneural theories maintain the integrity of individual neurons either in isolation or as participants in the great neuronal networks that make up the physical brain. Despite an almost universal acceptance by cognitive neuroscientists that the intangible mind must, in some way, be encoded by network states, Uttal shows that the problem of how the transformation occurs is not yet supported by empirical research findings at the micro as well as at the macro levels of analysis. Theories of the neuronal network survive more as metaphors than as robust explanations. This book also places special emphasis on the technological developments that stimulate these metaphors. A major conclusion drawn in this book is that it is not at all certain that the mind-brain problem is solvable in the sense that many other grand scientific problems are.

Theoretical Neuroscience

Theoretical Neuroscience PDF Author: Peter Dayan
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262541858
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
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. The book is divided into three parts. Part I discusses the relationship between sensory stimuli and neural responses, focusing on the representation of information by the spiking activity of neurons. Part II discusses the modeling of neurons and neural circuits on the basis of cellular and synaptic biophysics. Part III analyzes the role of plasticity in development and learning. An appendix covers the mathematical methods used, and exercises are available on the book's Web site.

The Neocortex

The Neocortex PDF Author: Wolf Singer
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262043246
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
Experts review the latest research on the neocortex and consider potential directions for future research. Over the past decade, technological advances have dramatically increased information on the structural and functional organization of the brain, especially the cerebral cortex. This explosion of data has radically expanded our ability to characterize neural circuits and intervene at increasingly higher resolutions, but it is unclear how this has informed our understanding of underlying mechanisms and processes. In search of a conceptual framework to guide future research, leading researchers address in this volume the evolution and ontogenetic development of cortical structures, the cortical connectome, and functional properties of neuronal circuits and populations. They explore what constitutes “uniquely human” mental capacities and whether neural solutions and computations can be shared across species or repurposed for potentially uniquely human capacities. Contributors Danielle S. Bassett, Randy M. Bruno, Elizabeth A. Buffalo, Michael E. Coulter, Hermann Cuntz, Stanislas Dehaene, James J. DiCarlo, Pascal Fries, Karl J. Friston, Asif A. Ghazanfar, Anne-Lise Giraud, Joshua I. Gold, Scott T. Grafton, Jennifer M. Groh, Elizabeth A. Grove, Saskia Haegens, Kenneth D. Harris, Kristen M. Harris, Nicholas G. Hatsopoulos, Tarik F. Haydar, Takao K. Hensch, Wieland B. Huttner, Matthias Kaschube, Gilles Laurent, David A. Leopold, Johannes Leugering, Belen Lorente-Galdos, Jason N. MacLean, David A. McCormick, Lucia Melloni, Anish Mitra, Zoltán Molnár, Sydney K. Muchnik, Pascal Nieters, Marcel Oberlaender, Bijan Pesaran, Christopher I. Petkov, Gordon Pipa, David Poeppel, Marcus E. Raichle, Pasko Rakic, John H. Reynolds, Ryan V. Raut, John L. Rubenstein, Andrew B. Schwartz, Terrence J. Sejnowski, Nenad Sestan, Debra L. Silver, Wolf Singer, Peter L. Strick, Michael P. Stryker, Mriganka Sur, Mary Elizabeth Sutherland, Maria Antonietta Tosches, William A. Tyler, Martin Vinck, Christopher A. Walsh, Perry Zurn

Networks of the Brain

Networks of the Brain PDF Author: Olaf Sporns
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262528983
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
An integrative overview of network approaches to neuroscience explores the origins of brain complexity and the link between brain structure and function. Over the last decade, the study of complex networks has expanded across diverse scientific fields. Increasingly, science is concerned with the structure, behavior, and evolution of complex systems ranging from cells to ecosystems. In Networks of the Brain, Olaf Sporns describes how the integrative nature of brain function can be illuminated from a complex network perspective. Highlighting the many emerging points of contact between neuroscience and network science, the book serves to introduce network theory to neuroscientists and neuroscience to those working on theoretical network models. Sporns emphasizes how networks connect levels of organization in the brain and how they link structure to function, offering an informal and nonmathematical treatment of the subject. Networks of the Brain provides a synthesis of the sciences of complex networks and the brain that will be an essential foundation for future research.

Brain as a Complex System

Brain as a Complex System PDF Author: Shervin Safavi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The brain can be conceived as a complex system, as it is made up of nested networks of interactions and moreover, demonstrates emergent-like behaviors such as oscillations. Based on this conceptualization, various tools and frameworks that stem from the field of complex systems have been adapted to answer neuroscientific questions. Certainly, using such tools for neuroscientific questions has been insightful for understanding the brain as a complex system. Nevertheless, they encounter limitations when they are adapted for the purpose of understanding the brain, or perhaps better should be stated that, developing approaches which are closer to the neuroscience side can also be instrumental for approaching the brain as a complex system. In this thesis, after an elaboration on the motivation of this endeavor in Chapter 1, we introduce a set of complementary approaches, with the rationale of exploiting the development in the field of systems neuroscience in order to be close to the neuroscience side of the problem, but also still remain connected to the complex systems perspective. Such complementary approaches can be envisioned through different apertures. In this thesis, we introduce our complementary approaches, through the following apertures: neural data analysis (Chapter 2), neural theories (Chapter 3), and cognition (Chapter 4). In Chapter 2, we argue that multi-scale and cross-scale analysis of neural data is one of the important aspects of the neural data analysis from the complex systems perspective toward the brain. Furthermore, we also elaborate that, investigating the brain across scales, is not only important from the abstract perspective of complex systems, but also motivating based on a variety of empirical evidence on coupling between brain activity at different scales, neural coordination and theoretical speculations on neural computation. Based on this motivation we first very briefly discuss some of the relevant cross-scale neural data analysis methodologies and then introduce two novel methodologies that have been developed as parts of this thesis. For micro-Meso relationship we introduced a multi-variate methodology for investigating spike-LFP relationship and in we introduced a methodology for detecting cooperative neural activities (neural events) in local field potentials, that can be used as a trigger to investigate simultaneous activity in larger and smaller scales. A prominent example of these neural events are sharp wave-ripples that has been shown to co-occur with precise coordination in the spiking activity of individual neurons and the large-scale brain activity as well. In Chapter 3, we introduce a new aperture through neural theories. One way of approaching the brain as a complex system is seeking for connections between theoretical frameworks that stem from the field of complex systems and the ones established in neuroscience. On the complex systems side, we consider the criticality hypothesis of the brain that has strong roots in the field of complex systems, and on the neuroscience side, we consider the efficient coding which is one of the most important theoretical frameworks in systems neuroscience. We first briefly introduce the background on efficient coding and criticality, and elaborate further on the motivation behind our integrative approach. We present our interim results, which suggests the two influential, and previously disparate fields - efficient coding, and criticality - might be intimately related. We observed that, in the vicinity of the parameters that leads to optimized performance of a network implementing neural coding, the distribution of avalanche sizes follow a power-law distribution. In we also provide an extensive discussion on the implication of our interim results and its future extensions. Moreover, in we also introduce another perspective which motivates such investigations, namely seeking for potential bridges between neural computation and neural dynamics. In Chapter 4, we argue that binocular rivalry, as a key phenomenon to investigate consciousness, is particularly relevant for a complex systems perspective toward the brain. Based on this insight, we suggest and conduct novel experimental work, namely, studying this phenomenon at a mesoscopic scale, that has not been done before. Surprisingly, in the last 30 years, almost all the previous studies on binocular rivalry were either focused on micro-scale (level of an individual neuron) or the macro-scale (level of the whole brain). Therefore, our work in this domain not only is valuable from the perspective of complex systems, but also for understanding the neural correlate of visual awareness per se. We elaborate on the outcome of this investigation. and were prerequisite for the binocular rivalry experiments. In we elaborate on the importance of studying prefrontal cortex (PFC) (which was the region of interest in our investigation) for understating the neural correlate of visual awareness. In we investigate the basic aspects of neural responses (tuning curves and noise correlations) of PFC units to simple visual stimulation (in a similar setting used for our binocular rivalry experiments). In and we investigate the neural correlate of visual aware- ness at a mesocopic scale (which is motivating from the complex system perspective toward the brain). We show that content of visual awareness is decodable from the population activity of PFC neurons and show oscillatory dynamics of PFC (as a reflection of collective neural activity) can be a relevant signature for perceptual switches. I believe that this is just the very first step toward establishing a connection from a complex systems perspective to cognition and behavior. Various theoretical and experimental steps need to be taken in the future studies to build a solid bridge between cognition and complex systems perspective toward the brain. The last chapter, Chapter 13, is dedicated to an outlook, a subjective perspective on how this research line can be proceeded. In the spirit of this thesis which is searching for principles, I believe we are missing an important aspect of the brain which is its adaptivity. At the end, brain, even the most “complex system”, needs to survive in the environment. Indeed, in the field of complex adaptive systems, the intention is understanding very similar questions in the nature. Inspired by ideas discussed in the field of complex adaptive systems, I introduce a set of new research directions which intend to incorporate the adaptivity aspect of the brain as one of the principles. These research directions also remain close to the neuroscience side, similar to the intention of the research presented in this thesis.