The Brain from 25,000 Feet

by Changizi, Mark A.

• ISBN13: 9781402011764
• ISBN10: 1402011768
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-07-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

In The Brain from 25,000 Feet, Mark A. Changizi defends a non-reductionist philosophy and applies it to a variety of problems in the brain sciences. Some of the key questions answered are as follows. Why do we see visual illusions, and why are illusions inevitable for any finite-speed vision machine? Why aren't brains universal learning machines, and what does the riddle of induction and its solution have to do with human learning and innateness? The author tackles such questions as why the brain is folded, and why animals have as many limbs as they do, explaining how these relate to principles of network optimality. He describes how most natural language words are vague and then goes on to explain the connection to the ultimate computational limits on machines. There is also a fascinating discussion of how animals accommodate greater behavioral complexity. This book is a must-read for researchers interested in taking a high-level, non-mechanistic approach to answering age-old fundamental questions in the brain sciences.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Scaling in Nervous Networks	1	(74)
The mammalian neocortex	7	(19)
Complexity in brain and behavior	26	(31)
The shape of limbed animals	57	(18)
Inevitability of Illusions	75	(76)
Visual inferences	79	(13)
A simple latency correction model	92	(12)
Explaining the geometrical illusions	104	(32)
Further directions for latency correction	136	(15)
Induction and Innateness	151	(88)
Paradigm Theory	170	(25)
Applications	195	(31)
``Solution'' to riddle and theory of innateness	226	(13)
Consequences of a Finite Brain	239	(56)
Vagueness, the phenomenon	245	(9)
Unseeable holes in our concepts	254	(22)
From theory to vagueness	276	(9)
Discussion	285	(10)
Bibliography	295	(18)
Index	313