The study and modulation of cortical connections is a rapidly growing area in neuroscience. This unique book by prominent researchers in the field covers recent advances in this area. The first section of the book describes studies of cortical connections, modulation of cortical connectivity and changes in cortical connections with activities such as motor learning and grasping in primates. The second section covers the use of non-invasive brain stimulation to study and modulate cortical connectivity in humans. The last section describes changes in brain connectivity in neurological and psychiatric diseases, and potential new treatments that manipulate brain connectivity. This book provides an up-to-date view of the study of cortical connectivity, and covers its role in both fundamental neuroscience and potential clinical applications.

By means of quantitative analysis of the tissue components in the cortex of the mouse, this book presents an overall picture of the cortical network which is then related to various theories on cortical function. Centering around the idea of a diffuse network in a fairly homogeneous population of excitatory neurons, that of the pyramidal cells, it shows that the whole organisation in the cortical skeleton of pryramidal cells corresponds well with the idea of an associative memory and with the theory of cell assemblies. Provides the reader with information on quantitative neuroanatomy and also on the methods used, in particular those that vary from the norm.

Understanding how populations of neurons encode information is the challenge faced by researchers in the field of neural coding. Focusing on the many mysteries and marvels of the mind has prompted a prominent team of experts in the field to put their heads together and fire up a book on the subject. Simply titled Principles of Neural Coding, this b

This book has brought together leading investigators who work in the new arena of brain connectomics. This includes ‘macro-connectome’ efforts to comprehensively chart long-distance pathways and functional networks; ‘micro-connectome’ efforts to identify every neuron, axon, dendrite, synapse, and glial process within restricted brain regions; and ‘meso-connectome’ efforts to systematically map both local and long-distance connections using anatomical tracers. This book highlights cutting-edge methods that can accelerate progress in elucidating static ‘hard-wired’ circuits of the brain as well as dynamic interactions that are vital for brain function. The power of connectomic approaches in characterizing abnormal circuits in the many brain disorders that afflict humankind is considered. Experts in computational neuroscience and network theory provide perspectives needed for synthesizing across different scales in space and time. Altogether, this book provides an integrated view of the challenges and opportunities in deciphering brain circuits in health and disease.

The study and modulation of cortical connections is a rapidly growing area in neuroscience. This unique book by prominent researchers in the field covers recent advances in this area. The first section of the book describes studies of cortical connections, modulation of cortical connectivity and changes in cortical connections with activities such as motor learning and grasping in primates. The second section covers the use of non-invasive brain stimulation to study and modulate cortical connectivity in humans. The last section describes changes in brain connectivity in neurological and psychiatric diseases, and potential new treatments that manipulate brain connectivity. This book provides an up-to-date view of the study of cortical connectivity, and covers its role in both fundamental neuroscience and potential clinical applications.

In the last ten years many different brain imaging devices have conveyed a lot of information about the brain functioning in different experimental conditions. In every case, the biomedical engineers, together with mathematicians, physicists and physicians are called to elaborate the signals related to the brain activity in order to extract meaningful and robust information to correlate with the external behaviour of the subjects. In such attempt, different signal processing tools used in telecommunications and other field of engineering or even social sciences have been adapted and re-used in the neuroscience field. The present book would like to offer a short presentation of several methods for the estimation of the cortical connectivity of the human brain. The methods here presented are relatively simply to implement, robust and can return valuable information about the causality of the activation of the different cortical areas in humans using non invasive electroencephalographic recordings. The knowledge of such signal processing tools will enrich the arsenal of the computational methods that a engineer or a mathematician could apply in the processing of brain signals.

Volume 5 of Cerebral Cortex completes the sequence of three volumes on the individual functional areas of the cerebral cortex by covering the somatosensory and motor areas. However, the chapters on these areas lead naturally to a series of others on patterns of connectivity in the cortex, intracortical and subcortical, so that the volume as a whole achieves a much broader viewpoint. The individual chapters on the sensory-motor areas reflect the considerable diversity of interest within the field, for each of the authors has given his or her chapter a different emphasis, reflecting in part topical interest and in part the body of data resulting from work in a particular species. In considering the functional organization of the somatosensory cortex, Robert Dykes and Andre Ruest have chosen to concentrate on the nature of the mapping process and its significance. Harold Burton, in his chapter on the somatosensory fields buried in the sylvian fissure, shows how critical is an understanding of this mapping process in the functional subdivision of the cortex. A frequently overlooked subdivision of the cortex, the vestibular region, is given the emphasis it deserves in a chapter by John Fredrickson and Allan Rubin. The further functional subdivisions that occur within the first somatosensory area are given an anatom ical basis in the review by Edward Jones of connectivity in the primate sensory motor cortex.