Overview

How can we understand a system as intricate as the human brain? Microcosms of the Brain presents a bold new approach to understanding this incredibly complex organ. 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 control action - steering the eyes, head, or limbs. The book shows how these subsystems can provide a microcosm of the brain - small enough to be analysed, but substantial enough to reveal general principles of brain function. By studying these simple subsystems and simulating their behaviour computationally, we can get some answers to the bigger questions about brain function. In ten chapters 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 students and researchers in the cognitive sciences, this is a book that could dramatically change the way that we explore the human mind.

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9780198528937

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Microcosms is a fascinating account of human sensor-motor coordination, with implications on the much larger question of how brains work. The brain is considered in its evolutionary role of helping us cope with the world. The book uses human vision to illustrate problems that the brain encounters and must solve. Ideas that are fundamentally mathematical are made accessible to a wide audience. Insightful, informative, and thought-provoking, sprinkled with subtle humor, the book can be appreciated and enjoyed by readers interested in cognition, perception, neuroscience, and understanding brains. Pentti Kanerva - Author of Sparse Distributed Memory (MIT Press, 1988) and Research Affiliate, Redwood Neuroscience Institute

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