Sherrington's Loom

Sherrington's Loom

Author: Alan J. McComas

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0190936541

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How does the brain create consciousness? How is it that we have a sense of self; a self that can identify thousands of people, places, objects, words, and musical melodies? While the ultimate challenge--that of transforming electrical impulses in nerve cells into sensations, thoughts, and actions--remains a mystery, there is a great deal that is now known about the way the brain functions. Further, that knowledge is increasing through the use of ever more powerful experimental methods. Sherrington's Loom brings the key information together by blending crucial historical discoveries with more recent findings in the laboratory and neurological clinic. This book is a "must-have" for anyone interested in the history of medicine and science, and who is eager for insights as to how the conscious brain may work.


Sherrington

Sherrington

Author: J. C. Eccles

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 3642618642

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So much has been written about the scientific contributions of Sherrington that the man himself, and his thoughts, have been overshadowed. More and more, students of history are calling for creative writing on the whole man, particularly when he is a genius. Those interested in the genesis of ideas want to know the settings for discoveries and the relevant circumstances which ushered in new truths and new insights. The "prepared mind" which Pasteur saw as the only one to be "favoured by fortune" is of immense importance in science, and our account of Sherring ton, we hope, will fill a very real gap in this field. During his life Sherrington actively discouraged any sugges tions that a biography be written. For that reason it was not until 1947 that there were any biographical notes by John Fulton, Graham Brown and A. D. Ritchie in a number of the British Medical Journal commemorating his ninetieth birthday, and in addition there was a leading article entitled "The Influence of Sherrington on Oinical Neurology". He left no autobiographical material except the few pages of reminiscences entitled "Mar ginalia", an essay written in honour of Charles Singer (1953).


The Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Model

The Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Model

Author: Dmitry Panchenko

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-02-26

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 1461462894

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The celebrated Parisi solution of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model for spin glasses is one of the most important achievements in the field of disordered systems. Over the last three decades, through the efforts of theoretical physicists and mathematicians, the essential aspects of the Parisi solution were clarified and proved mathematically. The core ideas of the theory that emerged are the subject of this book, including the recent solution of the Parisi ultrametricity conjecture and a conceptually simple proof of the Parisi formula for the free energy. The treatment is self-contained and should be accessible to graduate students with a background in probability theory, with no prior knowledge of spin glasses. The methods involved in the analysis of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model also serve as a good illustration of such classical topics in probability as the Gaussian interpolation and concentration of measure, Poisson processes, and representation results for exchangeable arrays.