What happens in our brain when we make a decision? What triggers a neuron to send out a signal? What is the neural code? This textbook for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students provides a thorough and up-to-date introduction to the fields of computational and theoretical neuroscience. It covers classical topics, including the Hodgkin–Huxley equations and Hopfield model, as well as modern developments in the field such as generalized linear models and decision theory. Conce...

The author is a space scientist of international reputation with a close and active relation with music (he studied organ with the late maestros Héctor Zeoli in Buenos Aires and Hans Jendis in Göttingen), who organized and directed the international workshops on the Neuropsychological Foundations of Music at the Carinthian Music Festivals in Ossiach, Austria. These workshops, held regularly between 1973 and 1985, have been credited as being the originators of the interdisciplinary approach...

This is a uniquely comprehensive reference that summarizes the state of the art of signal processing theory and techniques for solving emerging problems in neuroscience, and which clearly presents new theory, algorithms, software and hardware tools that are specifically tailored to the nature of the neurobiological environment. It gives a broad overview of the basic principles, theories and methods in statistical signal processing for basic and applied neuroscience problems.Written...

Computational neuroanatomy is an emerging field that utilizes various non-invasive brain imaging modalities, such as MRI and DTI, in quantifying the spatiotemporal dynamics of the human brain structures in both normal and clinical populations. This discipline emerged about twenty years ago and has made substantial progress in the past decade. The main goals of this book are to provide an overview of various mathematical, statistical and computational methodologies used in the field to a wi...

This classic text has been used in over 20 countries by advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in biophysics, physiology, medical physics, neuroscience, and biomedical engineering. It bridges the gap between an introductory physics course and the application of physics to the life and biomedical sciences.Extensively revised and updated, the fifth edition incorporates new developments at the interface between physics and biomedicine. New coverage includes cyclotrons,...

This book covers advances made since the 2004 Springer volume “Polarized Light in Animal Vision” edited by Horvath and Varju, but also provides reviews and synopses of some areas. Part I examines polarization sensitivity across many animal taxa including vertebrates and invertebrates and details both terrestrial and aquatic life. Part II is devoted to the description of polarized light in nature and explores how the physics of light must be taken into account when understanding how polariz...

An understanding of the senses - vision, hearing, touch, chemical and other non-human senses - is important not only for many fields of biology but also in applied areas such as human-computer interaction, robotics and computer games. Using information theory as a unifying framework, this is a wide-ranging survey of sensory systems, covering all known senses. The book draws on three unifying principles to examine senses: the Nyquist sampling theorem, Shannon's information theory, and the c...

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are rapidly developing into a mainstream, worldwide research endeavor. With so many new groups and projects, it can be difficult to identify the best ones. This book summarizes ten leading projects from around the world. About 60 submissions were received in 2011 for the highly competitive BCI Research Award, and an international jury selected the top ten. This Brief gives a concise but carefully illustrated and fully up-to-date description of each of these...

This volume provides a comprehensive selection of recent studies addressing insect hearing and acoustic communication. The variety of signalling behaviours and hearing organs makes insects highly suitable animals for exploring and analysing signal generation and hearing in the context of neural processing, ecology, evolution and genetics. Across a variety of hearing species like moths, crickets, bush-crickets, grasshoppers, cicadas and flies, the leading researchers in the field cover rece...

For those of us involved in research on the neural mechanisms that relate tissue damage to pain. it is becoming more evident that the sensation of pain and suffering could be considered as part of a mechanism that involves not only sizeable areas in the brain but also simultaneous activations of the immune and the endocrine systems as well. A consensus is growing among specialists in the field that pain involves the sharing of molecular mechanisms between the nervous, immune and endocrine ...

This volume is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the recent explosion of experimental tools in neuroscience that now make it possible to manipulate, record, and understand neuronal activity within the intact brain, and which are helping us learn how the many neurons that comprise a network act together to control behavior. Leaders in the field discuss the latest developments in optogenetics, functional imaging, circuit mapping, and the application of these tools to complex...

This unique text introduces students and researchers to the world of misfolded proteins, toxic oligomers, and amyloid assemblages, and the diseases of the brain that result. During the past few years the connections between failures in protein quality control and neurological disorders have been reinforced and strengthened by discoveries on multiple fronts. These findings provide novel insights on how amyloidogenic oligomers and fibrils form, interconvert from one state to another, and pro...