Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks - Hardcover

Arbib, Michael A. (Editor)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262011484 ISBN 13: 9780262011488

Publisher: The MIT Press, 1995

Synopsis

Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 1996.

In hundreds of articles by experts from around the world, and in overviews and "road maps" prepared by the editor, The Handbook of Brain Theory and Neural Networks charts the immense progress made in recent years in many specific areas related to two great questions: How does the brain work? and How can we build intelligent machines?

While many books have appeared on limited aspects of one subfield or another of brain theory and neural networks, the Handbook covers the entire sweep of topics—from detailed models of single neurons, analyses of a wide variety of biological neural networks, and connectionist studies of psychology and language, to mathematical analyses of a variety of abstract neural networks, and technological applications of adaptive, artificial neural networks.

The excitement, and the frustration, of these topics is that they span such a broad range of disciplines including mathematics, statistical physics and chemistry, neurology and neurobiology, and computer science and electrical engineering as well as cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and philosophy. Thus, much effort has gone into making the Handbook accessible to readers with varied backgrounds while still providing a clear view of much of the recent, specialized research in specific topics.

The heart of the book, part III, comprises of 267 original articles by leaders in the various fields, arranged alphabetically by title. Parts I and II, written by the editor, are designed to help readers orient themselves to this vast range of material. Part I, Background, introduces several basic neural models, explains how the present study of brain theory and neural networks integrates brain theory, artificial intelligence, and cognitive psychology, and provides a tutorial on the concepts essential for understanding neural networks as dynamic, adaptive systems. Part II, Road Maps, provides entry into the many articles of part III through an introductory "Meta-Map" and twenty-three road maps, each of which tours all the Part III articles on the chosen theme.

About this title

About the Author

Michael A. Arbib is University Professor; Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science; and Professor of Neuroscience, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Psychology at the University of Southern California.

Review

Today, neuroscience gives us great dual hopes, one to radically solve medical problems of the brain such as Arzheimer's disease, and the other to give an answer to the long-standing question of how the brain works to yield our mind. Medical achievements will be obtained based on accumulated knowledge of molecular and cellular events of the brain, but the understanding of the brain mechansims of mental activities requires theories and models. This handbook summerizes the success of neuroscience in developing such theories and models, and further provides a basis for future achievements toward the goal. It will help not only theorists, but also experimentalists to grasp the great potentially of theories and models in future neuroscience.

(Masao Ito, Director-General, Frontier Research Program, The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research)

No existing work comes close to covering the same range of topics in such an authoritative way. The editor has gone far beyond the usual collection of articles in providing roadmaps and cross-references for each topic. Judging from the articles that I have read and from the list of authors, the Handbook will become an invaluable resource to a wide range of researchers.

(Professor Jerry A. Feldman, International Computer Science Institute and University of California)

It's been a half century since such pioneers as Warren McCulloch and Donald Hebb, and, particularly in the last decade, brain theory has been in flower, intertwining with both neurophysiology and artificial neural networks. Boiling it down and concentrating it, as this handbook does so successfully,is likely to set the stage for something even more interesting.

(William H. Calvin, University of Washington neurophysiologist, author of The Ascent of Mind and co-author of Conversations with Neil's Brain)

At long last neural computation, as a wide interdisciplinary field, has found its universal, intellectual home. Under one roof we have all that we wanted to know from the biological to the matehmatical, from experiment to theory, from applications to abstract models, from robots to philosophy.

(Daniel Amit, Professor at the University of Rome and the university of Jerusalem; author of Modeling Brain Fuction)

The awesome product of an awesome task, this book will take us into the 21st Century with a wide and enlightened overview of computational neuroscience―and a healthy respect for the constraints that the real brain imposes on our models. Arbib has done what urgently needed to be done and what probably no one else could do.

(Joaquin M. Fuster, Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, University of California)

This revised Handbook of Brain Theory provides useful new data and and updates key concepts in neuroscience. It will be an indispensable guide for exploring the essentials of brain science.

(Masao Ito, RIKEN Brain Science Institute)

Edition details

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0262011484
• ISBN 13: 9780262011488
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1136