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Author: Christof Koch
Publisher: Roberts Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 456
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Book Description
Consciousness is the major unsolved problem in biology. Written as an introduction to the field and drawing upon clinical, psychological and physiological observations, this book seeks to answer questions of consciousness within a neuroscientific framework.
Author: Christof Koch
Publisher: Roberts Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 456
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Book Description
Consciousness is the major unsolved problem in biology. Written as an introduction to the field and drawing upon clinical, psychological and physiological observations, this book seeks to answer questions of consciousness within a neuroscientific framework.
Author: Christof Koch
Publisher: W. H. Freeman
ISBN: 9781936221042
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Consciousness is the major unsolved problem in biology. How do the elemental feelings and sensations making up conscious experience, the redness of red and painfulness of pain, arise from the concerted actions of nerve cells and their associated synaptic and molecular processes? Can such feelings be explained by modern science, or is some quite different kind of explanation needed? And how can this seemingly intractable problem be approached experimentally? Designed as an introduction to the field and drawing upon anatomical, physiological, clinical and psychological observations, this book seeks answers to these questions within a neurobiological framework; that is, how do the operations of the conscious mind emerge out of the specific interactions of myriads of neurons.
Author: Christof Koch
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262042819
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277
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Book Description
A thought-provoking argument that consciousness—more widespread than previously assumed—is the feeling of being alive, not a type of computation or a clever hack In The Feeling of Life Itself, Christof Koch offers a straightforward definition of consciousness as any subjective experience, from the most mundane to the most exalted—the feeling of being alive. Psychologists study which cognitive operations underpin a given conscious perception. Neuroscientists track the neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the organ of the mind. But why the brain and not, say, the liver? How can the brain—three pounds of highly excitable matter, a piece of furniture in the universe, subject to the same laws of physics as any other piece—give rise to subjective experience? Koch argues that what is needed to answer these questions is a quantitative theory that starts with experience and proceeds to the brain. In The Feeling of Life Itself, Koch outlines such a theory, based on integrated information. Koch describes how the theory explains many facts about the neurology of consciousness and how it has been used to build a clinically useful consciousness meter. The theory predicts that many, and perhaps all, animals experience the sights and sounds of life; consciousness is much more widespread than conventionally assumed. Contrary to received wisdom, however, Koch argues that programmable computers will not have consciousness. Even a perfect software model of the brain is not conscious. Its simulation is fake consciousness. Consciousness is not a special type of computation—it is not a clever hack. Consciousness is about being.
Author: Christof Koch
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262301032
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195
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Book Description
A fascinating exploration of the human brain that combines “the leading edge of consciousness science with surprisingly personal and philosophical reflection . . . shedding light on how scientists really think”—this is “science writing at its best” (Times Higher Education). In which a scientist searches for an empirical explanation for phenomenal experience, spurred by his instinctual belief that life is meaningful. What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. This engaging book—part scientific overview, part memoir, part futurist speculation—describes Koch’s search for an empirical explanation for consciousness. Koch recounts not only the birth of the modern science of consciousness but also the subterranean motivation for his quest—his instinctual (if “romantic”) belief that life is meaningful. Koch describes his own groundbreaking work with Francis Crick in the 1990s and 2000s and the gradual emergence of consciousness (once considered a “fringy” subject) as a legitimate topic for scientific investigation. Present at this paradigm shift were Koch and a handful of colleagues, including Ned Block, David Chalmers, Stanislas Dehaene, Giulio Tononi, Wolf Singer, and others. Aiding and abetting it were new techniques to listen in on the activity of individual nerve cells, clinical studies, and brain-imaging technologies that allowed safe and noninvasive study of the human brain in action. Koch gives us stories from the front lines of modern research into the neurobiology of consciousness as well as his own reflections on a variety of topics, including the distinction between attention and awareness, the unconscious, how neurons respond to Homer Simpson, the physics and biology of free will, dogs, Der Ring des Nibelungen, sentient machines, the loss of his belief in a personal God, and sadness. All of them are signposts in the pursuit of his life's work—to uncover the roots of consciousness.
Author: Christof Koch
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262112314
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 700
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Book Description
Kinetic Models of Synaptic Transmission / Alain Destexhe, Zachary F. Mainen, Terrence J. Sejnowski / - Cable Theory for Dendritic Neurons / Wilfrid Rall, Hagai Agmon-Snir / - Compartmental Models of Complex Neurons / Idan Segev, Robert E. Burke / - Multiple Channels and Calcium Dynamics / Walter M. Yamada, Christof Koch, Paul R. Adams / - Modeling Active Dendritic Processes in Pyramidal Neurons / Zachary F. Mainen, Terrence J. Sejnowski / - Calcium Dynamics in Large Neuronal Models / Erik De Schutter, Paul Smolen / - Analysis of Neural Excitability and Oscillations / John Rinzel, Bard Ermentrout / - Design and Fabrication of Analog VLSI Neurons / Rodney Douglas, Misha Mahowald / - Principles of Spike Train Analysis / Fabrizio Gabbiani, Christof Koch / - Modeling Small Networks / Larry Abbott, Eve Marder / - Spatial and Temporal Processing in Central Auditory Networks / Shihab Shamma / - Simulating Large Networks of Neurons / Alexander D. Protopapas, Michael Vanier, James M. Bower / ...
Author: Jochen Braun
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262024938
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
An attempt to derive a comprehensive theory of attention from both neurobiological and psychological data.
Author: Christof Koch
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195181999
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 587
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Book Description
Neural network research often builds on the fiction that neurons are simple linear threshold units, completely neglecting the highly dynamic and complex nature of synapses, dendrites, and voltage-dependent ionic currents. Biophysics of Computation: Information Processing in Single Neurons challenges this notion, using richly detailed experimental and theoretical findings from cellular biophysics to explain the repertoire of computational functions available to single neurons. The author shows how individual nerve cells can multiply, integrate, or delay synaptic inputs and how information can be encoded in the voltage across the membrane, in the intracellular calcium concentration, or in the timing of individual spikes.Key topics covered include the linear cable equation; cable theory as applied to passive dendritic trees and dendritic spines; chemical and electrical synapses and how to treat them from a computational point of view; nonlinear interactions of synaptic input in passive and active dendritic trees; the Hodgkin-Huxley model of action potential generation and propagation; phase space analysis; linking stochastic ionic channels to membrane-dependent currents; calcium and potassium currents and their role in information processing; the role of diffusion, buffering and binding of calcium, and other messenger systems in information processing and storage; short- and long-term models of synaptic plasticity; simplified models of single cells; stochastic aspects of neuronal firing; the nature of the neuronal code; and unconventional models of sub-cellular computation.Biophysics of Computation: Information Processing in Single Neurons serves as an ideal text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in cellular biophysics, computational neuroscience, and neural networks, and will appeal to students and professionals in neuroscience, electrical and computer engineering, and physics.
Author: Melvyn Goodale
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199596964
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 231
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Book Description
In this updated and extended edition of their book, Goodale and Milner explore one of the most extraordinary neurological cases of recent years—one that profoundly changed scientific views on the visual brain. Taking us on a journey into the unconscious brain, this book is a fascinating illustration of the power of the 'unconscious' mind.
Author: G. Buzsáki
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199828237
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 465
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Book Description
Studies of mechanisms in the brain that allow complicated things to happen in a coordinated fashion have produced some of the most spectacular discoveries in neuroscience. This book provides eloquent support for the idea that spontaneous neuron activity, far from being mere noise, is actually the source of our cognitive abilities. It takes a fresh look at the coevolution of structure and function in the mammalian brain, illustrating how self-emerged oscillatory timing is the brain's fundamental organizer of neuronal information. The small-world-like connectivity of the cerebral cortex allows for global computation on multiple spatial and temporal scales. The perpetual interactions among the multiple network oscillators keep cortical systems in a highly sensitive "metastable" state and provide energy-efficient synchronizing mechanisms via weak links. In a sequence of "cycles," György Buzsáki guides the reader from the physics of oscillations through neuronal assembly organization to complex cognitive processing and memory storage. His clear, fluid writing-accessible to any reader with some scientific knowledge-is supplemented by extensive footnotes and references that make it just as gratifying and instructive a read for the specialist. The coherent view of a single author who has been at the forefront of research in this exciting field, this volume is essential reading for anyone interested in our rapidly evolving understanding of the brain.
Author: Alva Noë
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1429957190
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231
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Book Description
Alva Noë is one of a new breed—part philosopher, part cognitive scientist, part neuroscientist—who are radically altering the study of consciousness by asking difficult questions and pointing out obvious flaws in the current science. In Out of Our Heads, he restates and reexamines the problem of consciousness, and then proposes a startling solution: Do away with the two hundred-year-old paradigm that places consciousness within the confines of the brain. Our culture is obsessed with the brain—how it perceives; how it remembers; how it determines our intelligence, our morality, our likes and our dislikes. It's widely believed that consciousness itself, that Holy Grail of science and philosophy, will soon be given a neural explanation. And yet, after decades of research, only one proposition about how the brain makes us conscious—how it gives rise to sensation, feeling, and subjectivity—has emerged unchallenged: We don't have a clue. In this inventive work, Noë suggests that rather than being something that happens inside us, consciousness is something we do. Debunking an outmoded philosophy that holds the scientific study of consciousness captive, Out of Our Heads is a fresh attempt at understanding our minds and how we interact with the world around us.
