Subcritical Brain, The: A Synergy Of Segregated Neural Circuits In Memory, Cognition And Sensorimotor Control
Subcritical Brain, The: A Synergy Of Segregated Neural Circuits In Memory, Cognition And Sensorimotor Control

Author: Yoram Baram

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2021-05-14

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 981123311X

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Have over a hundred years of brain research revealed all its secrets? This book is motivated by a realization that cortical structure and behavior can be explained by a synergy of seemingly different mathematical notions: global attractors, which define non-invertible neural firing rate dynamics, random graphs, which define connectivity of neural circuit, and prime numbers, which define the dimension and category of cortical operation. Quantum computation is shown to ratify the main conclusion of the book: loosely connected small neural circuits facilitate higher information storage and processing capacities than highly connected large circuits. While these essentially separate mathematical notions have not been commonly involved in the evolution of neuroscience, they are shown in this book to be strongly inter-related in the cortical arena. Furthermore, neurophysiological experiments, as well as observations of natural behavior and evidence found in medical testing of neurologically impaired patients, are shown to support, and to be supported by the mathematical findings.Related Link(s)

The Subcritical Brain
The Subcritical Brain

Author: Yoram Baram

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 9789811233104

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"Have over a hundred years of brain research revealed all its secrets? This book is motivated by the realization that the mathematical theory of dynamical systems underlies cortical behavior. This realization is further enhanced by the synergy of seemingly different mathematical notions: global attractors, which define non-invertible neural firing rate dynamics, random graphs, which define connectivity of neural circuit and prime numbers, which define the dimension and category of cortical operation. Quantum computation is shown to ratify the main conclusion of the book: loosely connected small neural circuits facilitate higher information storage and processing capacities than highly connected large circuits. While these notions have not been commonly involved in the evolution of neuroscience, they are shown in this book to play a fundamental role in the description of cortical behavior. Furthermore, neurophysiological experiments, as well as observations of natural behavior and evidence found in medical testing of neurologically impaired patients, are shown to support, and to be supported by the mathematical findings"--

The Entangled Brain
The Entangled Brain

Author: Luiz Pessoa

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-11-15

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0262544601

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A new vision of the brain as a fully integrated, networked organ. Popular neuroscience accounts often focus on specific mind-brain aspects like addiction, cognition, or memory, but The Entangled Brain tackles a much bigger question: What kind of object is the brain? Neuroscientist Luiz Pessoa describes the brain as a highly networked, interconnected system that cannot be neatly decomposed into a set of independent parts. One can’t point to the brain and say, “This is where emotion happens” (or any other mental faculty). Pessoa argues that only by understanding how large-scale neural circuits combine multiple and diverse signals can we truly appreciate how the brain supports the mind. Presenting the brain as an integrated organ and drawing on neuroscience, computation, mathematics, systems theory, and evolution, The Entangled Brain explains how brain functions result from cross-cutting brain processing, not the function of segregated areas. Parts of the brain work in a coordinated fashion across large-scale distributed networks in which disparate parts of the cortex and the subcortex work simultaneously to bring about behaviors. Pessoa intuitively explains the concepts needed to formalize this idea of the brain as a complex system and how to unleash powerful understandings built with “collective computations.”

The Playful Machine
The Playful Machine

Author: Ralf Der

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-01-11

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 3642202535

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Autonomous robots may become our closest companions in the near future. While the technology for physically building such machines is already available today, a problem lies in the generation of the behavior for such complex machines. Nature proposes a solution: young children and higher animals learn to master their complex brain-body systems by playing. Can this be an option for robots? How can a machine be playful? The book provides answers by developing a general principle---homeokinesis, the dynamical symbiosis between brain, body, and environment---that is shown to drive robots to self- determined, individual development in a playful and obviously embodiment- related way: a dog-like robot starts playing with a barrier, eventually jumping or climbing over it; a snakebot develops coiling and jumping modes; humanoids develop climbing behaviors when fallen into a pit, or engage in wrestling-like scenarios when encountering an opponent. The book also develops guided self-organization, a new method that helps to make the playful machines fit for fulfilling tasks in the real world. The book provides two levels of presentation. Students and scientific researchers interested in the field of robotics, self-organization and dynamical systems theory may be satisfied by the in-depth mathematical analysis of the principle, the bootstrapping scenarios, and the emerging behaviors. But the book additionally comes with a robotics simulator inviting also the non- scientific reader to simply enjoy the fabulous world of playful machines by performing the numerous experiments.

The Functional Role of Critical Dynamics in Neural Systems
The Functional Role of Critical Dynamics in Neural Systems

Author: Nergis Tomen

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-07-23

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 3030209652

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This book offers a timely overview of theories and methods developed by an authoritative group of researchers to understand the link between criticality and brain functioning. Cortical information processing in particular and brain function in general rely heavily on the collective dynamics of neurons and networks distributed over many brain areas. A key concept for characterizing and understanding brain dynamics is the idea that networks operate near a critical state, which offers several potential benefits for computation and information processing. However, there is still a large gap between research on criticality and understanding brain function. For example, cortical networks are not homogeneous but highly structured, they are not in a state of spontaneous activation but strongly driven by changing external stimuli, and they process information with respect to behavioral goals. So far the questions relating to how critical dynamics may support computation in this complex setting, and whether they can outperform other information processing schemes remain open. Based on the workshop “Dynamical Network States, Criticality and Cortical Function", held in March 2017 at the Hanse Institute for Advanced Studies (HWK) in Delmenhorst, Germany, the book provides readers with extensive information on these topics, as well as tools and ideas to answer the above-mentioned questions. It is meant for physicists, computational and systems neuroscientists, and biologists.

An Introduction to Transfer Entropy
An Introduction to Transfer Entropy

Author: Terry Bossomaier

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-11-15

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 3319432222

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This book considers a relatively new metric in complex systems, transfer entropy, derived from a series of measurements, usually a time series. After a qualitative introduction and a chapter that explains the key ideas from statistics required to understand the text, the authors then present information theory and transfer entropy in depth. A key feature of the approach is the authors' work to show the relationship between information flow and complexity. The later chapters demonstrate information transfer in canonical systems, and applications, for example in neuroscience and in finance. The book will be of value to advanced undergraduate and graduate students and researchers in the areas of computer science, neuroscience, physics, and engineering.

The Singularity Is Near
The Singularity Is Near

Author: Ray Kurzweil

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2005-09-22

Total Pages: 992

ISBN-13: 1101218886

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil, hailed by Bill Gates as “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence,” presents an “elaborate, smart, and persuasive” (The Boston Globe) view of the future course of human development. “Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.”—Los Angeles Times “Startling in scope and bravado.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times “An important book.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near presents a radical and optimistic view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.

Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language
Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language

Author: Maxim I. Stamenov

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2002-12-17

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 9027297088

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The emergence of language, social intelligence, and tool development are what made homo sapiens sapiens differentiate itself from all other biological species in the world. The use of language and the management of social and instrumental skills imply an awareness of intention and the consideration that one faces another individual with an attitude analogical to that of one’s own. The metaphor of ‘mirror’ aptly comes to mind.Recent investigations have shown that the human ability to ‘mirror’ other’s actions originates in the brain at a much deeper level than phenomenal awareness. A new class of neurons has been discovered in the premotor area of the monkey brain: ‘mirror neurons’. Quite remarkably, they are tuned to fire to the enaction as well as observation of specific classes of behavior: fine manual actions and actions performed by mouth. They become activated independent of the agent, be it the self or a third person whose action is observed. The activation in mirror neurons is automatic and binds the observation and enaction of some behavior by the self or by the observed other. The peculiar first-to-third-person ‘intersubjectivity’ of the performance of mirror neurons and their surprising complementarity to the functioning of strategic communicative face-to-face (first-to-second person) interaction may shed new light on the functional architecture of conscious vs. unconscious mental processes and the relationship between behavioral and communicative action in monkeys, primates, and humans. The present volume discusses the nature of mirror neurons as presented by the research team of Prof. Giacomo Rizzolatti (University of Parma), who originally discovered them, and the implications to our understanding of the evolution of brain, mind and communicative interaction in non-human primates and man.(Series B)

Topological Geometrodynamics
Topological Geometrodynamics

Author: Matti Pitkanen

Publisher: Bentham Science Publishers

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 1235

ISBN-13: 1681081792

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Topological geometrodynamics (TGD) is a modification of the theory of general relativity inspired by the problems related to the definition of inertial and gravitational energies in the earlier hypotheses. TGD is also a generalization of super string models. TGD brings forth an elegant theoretical projection of reality and builds upon the work by renowned scientists (Wheeler, Feynman, Penrose, Einstein, Josephson to name a few). In TGD, Physical space-time planes are visualized as four-dimensional surfaces in a certain 8-dimensional space (H). The choice of H is fixed by symmetries of standard model and leads to a geometric mapping of known classical fields and elementary particle numbers. TGD differs from Einstein’s geometrodynamics in the way space-time planes or ‘sheets’ are lumped together. Extending the theory based on fusing number concepts implies a further generalisation of the space-time concept allowing the identification of space-time correlates of cognition and intentionality. Additionally, zero energy ontology forces an extension of quantum measurement theory to a theory of consciousness and a hierarchy of phases is identified. Dark matter is thus predicted with far reaching implications for the understanding of consciousness and living systems. Therefore, it sets a solid foundation for modeling our universe in geometric terms. Topological Geometrodynamics: An Overview explains basic and advanced concepts about TGD. The book covers introductory information and classical TGD concepts before delving into twistor-space theory, particle physics, infinite-dimensional spinor geometry, generalized number theory, Planck constants, and the applications of TGD theory in research. The book is a valuable guide to TDG theory for researchers and advanced graduates in theoretical physics and cosmology.

The Human Advantage
The Human Advantage

Author: Suzana Herculano-Houzel

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2016-03-18

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 0262333201

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Why our human brains are awesome, and how we left our cousins, the great apes, behind: a tale of neurons and calories, and cooking. Humans are awesome. Our brains are gigantic, seven times larger than they should be for the size of our bodies. The human brain uses 25% of all the energy the body requires each day. And it became enormous in a very short amount of time in evolution, allowing us to leave our cousins, the great apes, behind. So the human brain is special, right? Wrong, according to Suzana Herculano-Houzel. Humans have developed cognitive abilities that outstrip those of all other animals, but not because we are evolutionary outliers. The human brain was not singled out to become amazing in its own exclusive way, and it never stopped being a primate brain. If we are not an exception to the rules of evolution, then what is the source of the human advantage? Herculano-Houzel shows that it is not the size of our brain that matters but the fact that we have more neurons in the cerebral cortex than any other animal, thanks to our ancestors' invention, some 1.5 million years ago, of a more efficient way to obtain calories: cooking. Because we are primates, ingesting more calories in less time made possible the rapid acquisition of a huge number of neurons in the still fairly small cerebral cortex—the part of the brain responsible for finding patterns, reasoning, developing technology, and passing it on through culture. Herculano-Houzel shows us how she came to these conclusions—making “brain soup” to determine the number of neurons in the brain, for example, and bringing animal brains in a suitcase through customs. The Human Advantage is an engaging and original look at how we became remarkable without ever being special.