Computational Neuroscience Series – serie

The complexity of the brain and the protean nature of behavior remain the most elusive area of science, but also the most important. van Hemmen and Sejnowski invited 23 experts from the many areas--from evolution to qualia--of systems neuroscience to formulate one problem each. Although each chapter was written independently and can be read separately, together they provide a useful roadmap to the field of systems neuroscience and will serve as a source of inspirations for future explorers of the brain.

Neural network research often builds on the fiction that neurons are simple linear threshold units, completely neglecting the highly dynamic and complex nature of synapses, dendrites, and voltage-dependent ionic currents. Biophysics of Computation: Information processing in single neurons challenges this notion, using richly detailed experimental and theoretical findings from cellular biophysics to explain the repertoire of computational functions available to single neurons. The author shows how individual nerve cells can multiply, integrate, or delay synaptic inputs and how information can be encoded in the voltage across the membrane, in the intracellular calcium concentration, or in the timing of individual spikes.Key topics covered include the linear cable equation; cable theory as applied to passive dendritic trees and dendritic spines; chemical and electrical synapses and how to treat them from a computational point of view; nonlinear interactions of synaptic input in passive and active dendritic trees; the Hodgkin-Huxley model of action potential generation and propagation; phase space analysis; linking stochastic ionic channels to membrane-dependent currents; calcium- and potassium-currents and their role in information processing; the role of diffusion, buffering and binding of calcium, and other messenger systems in information processing and storage; short- and long-term models of synaptic plasticity; simplified models of single cells; stochastic aspects of neuronal firing; the nature of the neuronal code; and unconventional models of sub-cellular computation.This book serves as an ideal text for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in cellular biophysics, computational neuroscience, and neural networks, and will appeal to students and professionals in neuroscience, electrical and computer engineering, and physics.

This book provides an introduction into both computational models and experimental paradigms that are concerned with sensory cue integration both within and between sensory modalities. Importantly, across behavioral, electrophysiological and theoretical approaches, Bayesian statistics is emerging as a common language in which cue-combination problems can be expressed. This book focuses on the emerging probabilistic way of thinking about these problems. These approaches derive from the realization that all our sensors are noisy and moreover are often affected by ambiguity. For example, mechanoreceptor outputs are variable and they cannot distinguish if a perceived force is caused by the weight of an object or by force we are producing ourselves. The computational approaches described in this book aim at formalizing the uncertainty of cues. They describe cue combination as the nervous system's attempt to minimize uncertainty in its estimates and to choose successful actions. Some computational approaches described in the chapters of this book are concerned with the application of such statistical ideas to real-world cue-combination problems, such as shape and depth perception. Other parts of the book ask how uncertainty may be represented in the nervous system and used for cue combination. The broadening scope of probabilistic approaches to cue combination is highlighted in the breadth of topics covered in this book: the chapters summarize and discuss computational approaches and behavioral evidence aimed at understanding the combination of visual, auditory, proprioceptive, and haptic cues. Some chapters address the combination of cues within a single sensory modality while others address the combination across sensory modalities. Neural implementation, behavior, and theory are considered. The unifying aspect of this book is the focus on the uncertainty intrinsic to sensory cues and the underlying question of how the nervous system deals with this uncertainty.The book is intended as a reference text for graduate students and professionals in perceptual psychology, computational neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience and sensory neurophysiology.