Computational Neuroscience (Springer Optimization and Its Applications, 38)

This book represents a collection of recent advances in computational studies in neuroscience research that practically applies to a collaborative and integrative environment in engineering and medical domains. This work has been designed to address the explosion of interest by academic researchers and practitioners in highly-effective coordination between computational models and tools and quantitative investigation of neuroscientific data. To bridge the vital gap between science and medicine, this book brings together diverse research areas ranging from medical signal processing, image analysis, and data mining to neural network modeling, regulation of gene expression, and brain dynamics. We hope that this work will also be of value to investigators and practitioners in academic institutions who become involved in computational modeling as an aid in translating information in neuroscientific data to their colleagues in medical - main. This volume will be very appealing to graduate (and advanced undergraduate) students, researchers, and practitioners across a wide range of industries (e. g. , pharmaceutical, chemical, biological sciences), who require a detailed overview of the practical aspects of computational modeling in real-life neuroscience problems. For this reason, our audience is assumed to be very diverse and heterogenous, including: vii viii Preface • researchers from engineering, computer science, statistics, and mathematics - mains as well as medical and biological scientists; •physicians working in scienti?c research to understand how basic science can be linked with biological systems.

The human brain is among the most complex systems known to mankind. Neuroscientists seek to understand brain function through detailed analysis of neuronal excitability and synaptic transmission. Only in the last few years has it become feasible to capture simultaneous responses from a large enough number of neurons to empirically test the theories of human brain function computationally. This book is comprised of state-of-the-art experiments and computational techniques that provide new insights and improve our understanding of the human brain.

This volume includes contributions from diverse disciplines including electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, industrial engineering, and medicine, bridging a vital gap between the mathematical sciences and neuroscience research. Covering a wide range of research topics, this volume demonstrates how various methods from data mining, signal processing, optimization and cutting-edge medical techniques can be used to tackle the most challenging problems in modern neuroscience.

The results presented in this book are of great interest and value to scientists, graduate students, researchers and medical practitioners interested in the most recent developments in computational neuroscience.