How the cerebral cortex operates near a critical phase transition point for optimum performance. Individual neurons have limited computational powers, but when they work together, it is almost like magic. Firing synchronously and then breaking off to improvise by themselves, they can be paradoxically both independent and interdependent. This happens near the critical point: when neurons are poised between a phase where activity is damped and a phase where it is amplified, where information processing is optimized, and complex emergent activity patterns arise. The claim that neurons in the cortex work best when they operate near the critical point is known as the criticality hypothesis. In this book John Beggs—one of the pioneers of this hypothesis—offers an introduction to the critical point and its relevance to the brain. Drawing on recent experimental evidence, Beggs first explains the main ideas underlying the criticality hypotheses and emergent phenomena. He then discusses the critical point and its two main consequences—first, scale-free properties that confer optimum information processing; and second, universality, or the idea that complex emergent phenomena, like that seen near the critical point, can be explained by relatively simple models that are applicable across species and scale. Finally, Beggs considers future directions for the field, including research on homeostatic regulation, quasicriticality, and the expansion of the cortex and intelligence. An appendix provides technical material; many chapters include exercises that use freely available code and data sets.

The brain ... There is no other part of the human anatomy that is so intriguing. How does it develop and function and why does it sometimes, tragically, degenerate? The answers are complex. In Discovering the Brain, science writer Sandra Ackerman cuts through the complexity to bring this vital topic to the public. The 1990s were declared the "Decade of the Brain" by former President Bush, and the neuroscience community responded with a host of new investigations and conferences. Discovering the Brain is based on the Institute of Medicine conference, Decade of the Brain: Frontiers in Neuroscience and Brain Research. Discovering the Brain is a "field guide" to the brainâ€"an easy-to-read discussion of the brain's physical structure and where functions such as language and music appreciation lie. Ackerman examines: How electrical and chemical signals are conveyed in the brain. The mechanisms by which we see, hear, think, and pay attentionâ€"and how a "gut feeling" actually originates in the brain. Learning and memory retention, including parallels to computer memory and what they might tell us about our own mental capacity. Development of the brain throughout the life span, with a look at the aging brain. Ackerman provides an enlightening chapter on the connection between the brain's physical condition and various mental disorders and notes what progress can realistically be made toward the prevention and treatment of stroke and other ailments. Finally, she explores the potential for major advances during the "Decade of the Brain," with a look at medical imaging techniquesâ€"what various technologies can and cannot tell usâ€"and how the public and private sectors can contribute to continued advances in neuroscience. This highly readable volume will provide the public and policymakersâ€"and many scientists as wellâ€"with a helpful guide to understanding the many discoveries that are sure to be announced throughout the "Decade of the Brain."

Neurowissenschaftler suchen nach Antworten auf die Fragen, wie wir lernen und Information speichern, welche Prozesse im Gehirn verantwortlich sind und in welchem Zeitrahmen diese ablaufen. Die Konzepte, die aus der Physik kommen und weiterentwickelt werden, können in Medizin und Soziologie, aber auch in Robotik und Bildanalyse Anwendung finden. Zentrales Thema dieses Buches sind die sogenannten kritischen Phänomene im Gehirn. Diese werden mithilfe mathematischer und physikalischer Modelle beschrieben, mit denen man auch Erdbeben, Waldbrände oder die Ausbreitung von Epidemien modellieren kann. Neuere Erkenntnisse haben ergeben, dass diese selbstgeordneten Instabilitäten auch im Nervensystem auftreten. Dieses Referenzwerk stellt theoretische und experimentelle Befunde internationaler Gehirnforschung vor zeichnet die Perspektiven dieses neuen Forschungsfeldes auf.

Neural field theory has a long-standing tradition in the mathematical and computational neurosciences. Beginning almost 50 years ago with seminal work by Griffiths and culminating in the 1970ties with the models of Wilson and Cowan, Nunez and Amari, this important research area experienced a renaissance during the 1990ties by the groups of Ermentrout, Robinson, Bressloff, Wright and Haken. Since then, much progress has been made in both, the development of mathematical and numerical techniques and in physiological refinement und understanding. In contrast to large-scale neural network models described by huge connectivity matrices that are computationally expensive in numerical simulations, neural field models described by connectivity kernels allow for analytical treatment by means of methods from functional analysis. Thus, a number of rigorous results on the existence of bump and wave solutions or on inverse kernel construction problems are nowadays available. Moreover, neural fields provide an important interface for the coupling of neural activity to experimentally observable data, such as the electroencephalogram (EEG) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). And finally, neural fields over rather abstract feature spaces, also called dynamic fields, found successful applications in the cognitive sciences and in robotics. Up to now, research results in neural field theory have been disseminated across a number of distinct journals from mathematics, computational neuroscience, biophysics, cognitive science and others. There is no comprehensive collection of results or reviews available yet. With our proposed book Neural Field Theory, we aim at filling this gap in the market. We received consent from some of the leading scientists in the field, who are willing to write contributions for the book, among them are two of the founding-fathers of neural field theory: Shun-ichi Amari and Jack Cowan.

There has been substantial progress in understanding the contributions of the auditory forebrain to hearing, sound localization, communication, emotive behavior, and cognition. The Auditory Cortex covers the latest knowledge about the auditory forebrain, including the auditory cortex as well as the medial geniculate body in the thalamus. This book will cover all important aspects of the auditory forebrain organization and function, integrating the auditory thalamus and cortex into a smooth, coherent whole. Volume One covers basic auditory neuroscience. It complements The Auditory Cortex, Volume 2: Integrative Neuroscience, which takes a more applied/clinical perspective.

Since 2003, when spontaneous activity in cortical slices was first found to follow scale-free statistical distributions in size and duration, increasing experimental evidences and theoretical models have been reported in the literature supporting the emergence of evidence of scale invariance in the cortex. Although strongly debated, such results refer to many different in vitro and in vivo preparations (awake monkeys, anesthetized rats and cats, in vitro slices and dissociated cultures), suggesting that power law distributions and scale free correlations are a very general and robust feature of cortical activity that has been conserved across species as specific substrate for information storage, transmission and processing. Equally important is that the features reminiscent of scale invariance and criticality are observed at scale spanning from the level of interacting arrays of neurons all the way up to correlations across the entire brain. Thus, if we accept that the brain operates near a critical point, little is known about the causes and/or consequences of a loss of criticality and its relation with brain diseases (e.g. epilepsy). The study of how pathogenetical mechanisms are related to the critical/non-critical behavior of neuronal networks would likely provide new insights into the cellular and synaptic determinants of the emergence of critical-like dynamics and structures in neural systems. At the same time, the relation between the impaired behavior and the disruption of criticality would help clarify its role in normal brain function. The main objective of this Research Topic is to investigate the emergence/disruption of the emergent critical-like states in healthy/impaired neural systems.