Microcosms of the Brain What Sensorimotor Systems Reveal about the Mind

by Tweed, Douglas

• ISBN13: 9780198528937
• ISBN10: 0198528930
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-11-20
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

How can we understand a system as intricate as the human brain? Microcosms of the brain presents a bold new approach. It argues that the key to understanding brain function lies in the sensorimotor systems - those that gather sensory data such as light and sound, and use them to controlaction, steering the eyes, head, or limbs. The book shows how these subsystems can serve as microcosms of the brain - small enough to be analyzed but substantial enough to reveal general principles of brain function. By studying these simple systems and simulating them on computers, we can getsome answers to the bigger questions about the brain.In ten chapters Douglas Tweed explores ten concepts that may help form a basis for the computerized neuroscience of the future: optimization, computation, complexity, learning, dynamics, interfaces, loops, degrees of freedom, information, and inference. He explains these concepts in simple,non-mathematical language, and shows how they can bring some order to our view of the human brain.Written to be accessible to lay readers as well as students and researchers in the cognitive sciences, this is a book that could dramatically change the way we explore the human mind.

Author Biography

Douglas Tweed: Professor, Departments of Physiology and Medicine, University of Toronto, Canada

Table of Contents

1 Brain of darkness	1	(6)
2 Guide to the interior	7	(7)
3 On the shoulders of computers	14	(15)
4 Genome for a network	29	(12)
5 The adaptive brain	41	(32)
6 Unfolding in time	73	(15)
7 Brains and brawn	88	(14)
8 Thoughts running in circles	102	(14)
9 Degrees of freedom	116	(31)
10 The flow of information	147	(9)
11 Inference	156	(18)
12 The search for intelligent life in the brain	174	(5)
Glossary	179	(4)
Notes and references	183	(12)
Index	195