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Cerebral Cortex: Principles of Operation.
ISBN: 978019 8784852 (hardback)
ISBN: 978019 8820345 (paperback)
The
overall aim of this book is to provide insight into the principles of
operation of the cerebral cortex. These are key to understanding how
we, as humans, function.
This book
focuses on how the cortex works at the computational neuroscience
level. The book aims to forge an understanding of how some key brain
systems may operate at the computational level, so that we can
understand how the cortex actually performs some of its complex and necessarily computational functions in memory,
perception, attention, decision-making, and cognitive functons.
The book does
not attempt to produce a single computational theory of how the cortex
operates. Instead, I highlight many different principles of cortical
function, most of which are likely to be building blocks of how our
cortex operates. The reason for this approach is that many of the
principles may well be correct, and useful in understanding how the
cortex operates, but some might turn out not to be useful or correct.
The aim of this book is therefore to propose some of the fundamental
principles of operation of the cerebral cortex, many or most of which
will provide a foundation for understanding the operation of the
cortex, rather than to produce a single theory of operation of the
cortex, which might be disproved if any one of its elements was found
to be weak.
David
Nutt, Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London and
President of the European Brain Council said:
"A
book remarkable in its ambition, and even more remarkable in its content. A
truly landmark achievement by a neuroscientist who has brought together his
lifetime of research knowledge and experience into this outstanding volume.
Edmund Rolls is to be congratulated on this impressive synthesis of decades of
neuroscience data."
The Contents and Appendices 2 and 4 are available here. Appendix 4 is 'Simulation software for neuronal network models'. The operation of biologically plausible neuronal networks is described in Appendix 2 'Neuronal network models'.
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