Written for cognitive scientists, psychologists, computer scientists, engineers, and neuroscientists, this book provides an accessible overview of how computational network models are being used to model neurobiological phenomena. Each chapter presents a representative example of how biological data and network models interact with the authors' research. The biological phenomena cover network- or circuit-level phenomena in humans and other higher-order vertebrates.

Written for cognitive scientists, psychologists, computer scientists, engineers, and neuroscientists, this book provides an accessible overview of how computational network models are being used to model neurobiological phenomena. Each chapter presents a representative example of how biological data and network models interact with the authors' research. The biological phenomena cover network- or circuit-level phenomena in humans and other higher-order vertebrates.

A cutting-edge reference source for the interdisciplinary field of computational cognitive modeling.

Rethinking Innateness asks the question, "What does it really mean to say that a behavior is innate?" The authors describe a new framework in which interactions, occurring at all levels, give rise to emergent forms and behaviors. These outcomes often may be highly constrained and universal, yet are not themselves directly contained in the genes in any domain-specific way. One of the key contributions of Rethinking Innateness is a taxonomy of ways in which a behavior can be innate. These include constraints at the level of representation, architecture, and timing; typically, behaviors arise through the interaction of constraints at several of these levels.The ideas are explored through dynamic models inspired by a new kind of "developmental connectionism," a marriage of connectionist models and developmental neurobiology, forming a new theoretical framework for the study of behavioral development. While relying heavily on the conceptual and computational tools provided by connectionism, Rethinking Innateness also identifies ways in which these tools need to be enriched by closer attention to biology.

This resource defines and refines two major theoretical approaches within developmental science that address the central issues of development-connectionism and dynamical systems theory.

In The Algebraic Mind, Gary Marcus attempts to integrate two theories about how the mind works, one that says that the mind is a computer-like manipulator of symbols, and another that says that the mind is a large network of neurons working together in parallel. Resisting the conventional wisdom that says that if the mind is a large neural network it cannot simultaneously be a manipulator of symbols, Marcus outlines a variety of ways in which neural systems could be organized so as to manipulate symbols, and he shows why such systems are more likely to provide an adequate substrate for language and cognition than neural systems that are inconsistent with the manipulation of symbols. Concluding with a discussion of how a neurally realized system of symbol-manipulation could have evolved and how such a system could unfold developmentally within the womb, Marcus helps to set the future agenda of cognitive neuroscience.

This second edition presents the enormous progress made in recent years in the many subfields related to the two great questions : how does the brain work? and, How can we build intelligent machines? This second edition greatly increases the coverage of models of fundamental neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience, and neural network approaches to language. (Midwest).