23 Problems in Systems Neuroscience

With such an attractive list of topics, this book is sure to find a wide audience at every level of interest, from lay readers to students and academics.

• Part I How have brains evolved? ; 1. Shall we ever understand the fly's brain? ; 2. Can we understand the action of brain in natural environments? ; 3. Hemisphere dominance of brain function-which functions are lateralized and why? ; Part II How is the cerebral cortex organized? ; 4. What is the function of the thalamus? ; 5. What is a neuronal map, how does it arise, and what is it good for? ; 6. What is fed back? ; Part III How do neurons interact? ; 7. How Can the Brain be so Fast? ; 8. What is the Neural Code? ; 9. Are single cortical neurons independent or are they obedient members of a huge orchestra? ; 10. What is the other 85% of V1 doing? ; Part IV What can brains compute? ; 11. Which computation runs in visual cortical columns? ; 12. Are neurons adapted for specific computations? Examples from temporal coding in the auditory system ; 13. How is time represented in the brain? ; 14. How general are neural codes in sensory systems? ; 15. How does the hearing system perform auditory scene analysis? ; 16. How does our visual system achieve shift and size invariance? ; 17. What is reflected in sensory neocortical activity: External stimuli or what the cortex does with them? ; 18. Do perception and action result from different brain circuits? The three visual systems hypothesis ; 19. What are the projective fields of cortical neurons? ; 20. How are the features of objects integrated into perceptual wholes that are selected by attention? ; 21. Where are the switches on this thing? ; 22. Synesthesia: What does it tell us about the emergence of qualia, metaphor, abstract thought and language? ; 23. What are the neural correlates of consciousness?