The Evolving Brain: The Known And the Unknown

Book Description

The human brain is arguably the most complex object in the universe. With about 100 billion neurons, each of which makes perhaps 10,000 synapses, our incredible central processing unit is capable of roughly 1,000 trillion interconnections.

What do scientists know about how this amazingly complex organ functions? Is it even possible to unravel all of its mysteries? In this comprehensive book on the science of the brain, distinguished neurophysiologist R. Grant Steen provides us with a crash course on how the brain works. As a researcher on the forefront of brain studies, Dr. Steen explores the latest findings on a host of topics:

· Consciousness, unconsciousness, and brain death
· Learning, memory, and role of genes
· Motivation, aggression, and the range of emotions
· The plasticity of the growing brain
· Mental illness and treatment

He also delves into such stimulating questions as: Where does creativity come from? What is personality? Can we distinguish between the brain and the mind? Impressive in breadth and depth, yet written with clarity in an engaging, nontechnical style, this fascinating tour of the brain provides the general reader with the latest information on one of the most intriguing and burgeoning areas of scientific research. No topic has more meaning or relevance than using our brains to understand the working of our own minds.

Customer Reviews:

A lively blend of science, health and social issues under one cover........2007-06-09

THE EVOLVING BRAIN: THE KNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN explores the latest findings on brain physiology, from the nature of consciousness and unconsciousness to learning, genetic influences, mental illness and more. College-level holdings as well as general-interest libraries strong in popular science and health will find discussions draw important links between mental functions and attributes of creativity, personality, and more, making for a lively blend of science, health and social issues under one cover.

Challenging and Informative.......2007-05-01

This book is certainly one of the most thought-provoking works I have read. It treats, arguably, the most incredibly complex thesis possible. It describes what is known today about the human brain as well as ongoing research into brain function and malfunction attributable to disease or accident. The author also conjectures about needed research in the future as well as some impediments to future research on the brain. He also discusses relationships among brain function and behavior; neurology and psychiatry; and environmental and genetic components of brain development.

One of the most interesting ideas presented comes in the form of an analogy between an ant hill and brain development. In this analogy, he indicates that success in the ant colony depends upon the cooperation of each individual in performing its task whereas success in the brain depends upon the cooperation of each neuron in performing its task. Perhaps the goal of complex behavior in the brain and a force driving the continuing evolution of the human mind is growth toward cooperation among humans. For anyone interested in understanding more cogently the relationships among people his section on intelligence and sociability is very rewarding.

For those of us who are not neurologists this book presents its message in a clear and meaningful manner. I suspect it may present even greater clarity of meaning to those who are engaged in research on brain behavior or function. This is a scholarly work made understandable to the layman.

What may research on the human brain reveal to us in the next decade?

What We Know and Don't Know About the Brain.......2007-03-01

This book is a state of the art discussion on the brain intended for the general reader rather than the professional. Unlike many such books that have been published in the past, this one is written by an individual who is both a neurophysiologist and a psychiatrist. As such the book covers not only the physical and chemical aspects of the brain, but also the thinking aspects.

I was very glad to see the discussion in the book on subjects that are emotionally laden subjects such the potential benefits of stem cell research in such diseases as seizure, ischemic stroke, Parkinson's, Huntington's, ALS, verious childhood diseases, brain tumors. And in his discussion about Brain Death with particular mention of the Terri Schiavo case. The tests that have to be passed before a person is pronounced brain dead are described and they are extensive.

This is a fairly good sized book at 400+ pages. Yet, it is refreshing to see Dr. Steen admit there is much more to learn and points to several directions where reseach is ongoing and opening ever more areas where we just don't know.

This is a book I'd recommend to anyone interested in the subject, but especially to those who have a family member or loved one wuffereing from a brain disease.

Evolving Brains (Scientific American Library)

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Very Straight to the Point, Understandable Book
A very interesting book
Great synthesis
From small beginnings . . .
Mind expanding material

Evolving Brains (Scientific American Library)
John Morgan Allman
Manufacturer: W.H. Freeman & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0716750767

Amazon.com

What's the big deal about big brains? They're a costly enhancement, says neurobiologist John Allman in Evolving Brains. "Animals with big brains are rare," he stresses. "If brains enable animals to adapt to changing environments, why is it that so few animals have large brains? The reason is that big brains are very expensive." He examines the whys and wherefores of large-brain evolution, and draws out the connections between large brains and long lives; shows why major evolutionary advances are often made by small predators; makes you appreciate why mammals, burdened by the cost of warm-bloodedness, were unable to unseat the dinosaurs; and more. So, while large brains such as the ones we humans enjoy may give survival advantages to individuals, some species have done (and did) just fine for millions of years with pea brains.

Rather than talking only about cells, circuits, neurotransmitters, and genes, or gliding up to the ethereal regions of psychology and philosophy, Allman looks at the whole organism--the "middle-sized, middle-distanced objects," as Willard Van Orman Quine said. Evolving Brains is full of interesting scientific tidbits, only rarely becoming tangled in the thicket of jargon. --Mary Ellen Curtin

Book Description

How did the human brain with all its manifold capacities evolve from basic functions in simple organisms that lived nearly a billion years ago? John Allman addresses this question in Evolving Brains, a provocative study of brain evolution that introduces readers to some of the most exciting developments in science in recent years.

Customer Reviews:

Very Straight to the Point, Understandable Book.......2006-10-10

This book proceeds from molecules in bacteria with brain-like functions all the way to the very complex brains of primates. It explains the history of how the brains evolved in very understandable terms using pictures and graphs. It shows how various innovations in the nervous system created both new possibilities that could be explored by future animals as well as cutting other possibilities off. It talks about how having a complex brain is related to worm-bloodedness. In short, read and find out.

A very interesting book.......2005-11-25

This book starts with some basics about the nature of brains, and a comparison of brains. Special mention is made of serotonin, which often "modulates the response elicted by other neurotransmitters." It seems that serotonin tends to reduce risk-taking and fighting. But it also reduces motivation, as well as sensitivity to opportunities for rewards that risk-taking can bring.

Next, there is a more detailed explanation of the different parts of the brain and nervous system as well as the senses of sight and smell. After that, we learn about brains in warm-blooded creatures and primates. And we get into the question of senescene (the risk of dying going up with advanced age rather than staying the same) and what brains have to do with that. As well as more about sight, and how our brains allow us to be so aware of patterns and motion.

There are all sorts of fascinating tidbits to be found. When babies cry out for their mothers, do they do so in a high-pitched voice? Well, in some mammals, they do so at such high frequencies that while their mothers can hear them (and find them), predators find these sounds to be ultrasonic, and thus do not notice. There is also a complex attempt to explain why primates tend to have specific alarm cries for aerial versus ground predators. I find this phenomenon totally unsurprising: sentries make an entire group safer, and since all group members are potential sentries, everyone benefits including the sentries. It's easy to imagine how such cries might have evolved, even though the individuals crying out might well call attention to themselves.

We humans have very large ratios of brain weight to body weight. And perhaps the most interesting part of the book deals with the evolutionary tradeoffs involved with bigger brains. By the way, the part of the body that is most sacrificed in humans to get the excess brain weight is the gut. The liver is also a little smaller than for a smaller-brained mammal.

At the end of the book, we get into the interesting question of why Women live longer than Men. Women definitely do tend to live longer, and often have the unhappy experiences of outliving not only their husbands, but even one or more sons. But why? There are, of course, some flippant answers (not discussed in this book, of course). Men are genetically inhibited from asking for directions, and as a result get lost, wander around, and die. Men are married to Women (actually, I think married men tend to outlive unmarried ones). Men tend not to wear panty hose, a marvelous invention that protects the legs against swelling and blood clots. More seriously, I thought a dominant reason might be the fact that Men generally weigh more than Women. Within a species, smaller mammals may tend to live longer. But Allman makes the point that in those mammalian species where males have major role in parenting (such as the owl monkey), the males live longer. And there's an evolutionary reason for this: a species does better if the caretakers of the young live longer. The author discusses a couple of mechanisms for this: Males take more risks, while in females, estrogen enhances the actions of serotonin, reducing risk-taking behavior. Another mechanism could be that females may tend to lose fewer hippocampal neurons, which "are richly supplied with receptors for the corticosteroid hormones, which are produced by the adrenal cortex to mobilize the body's defenses when subjected to stress." If that's true, it could explain the higher incidence of death in Men due to stress-related causes.

I enjoyed this book very much. I learned plenty from it, and I highly recommend it.

Great synthesis.......2005-10-19

A well written and illustrated book full of interesting thoughts about the evolution of brains leading up to our own.

The level of writing is about that of a review paper. Although Allman covers a lot of subjects, from genetics, developmental biology, palaeontology to primate vision, all concepts are well explained and illustrated and the book makes good reading for a research biologist as well as for an interested layman.

Allman started his career as an anthropologist, which gives him a different perspective than the average neuroscientist's. He not only describes the workings of the nervous systems and behaviors of different animals, but puts them into perspective with their evolutionary roots and their ecological niche. All these insights are not hand-waving speculation, but well supported by comparative studies.

Another strong point of this book is how Allman guides the reader trough the evolutionary lineage leading from amphibians to reptiles, mammal like reptiles, mammals, primates to ourselves. At every branch point he points out the critical innovations, the evolutionary pressures that most likely lead to these innovations and the trade offs made. A key question he addresses is, "why isn't every animal equipped with a big brain?". It is our own experience, both phylogenetically as well as everyday life, that a big brain, and the resulting high level of intelligence, is an advantage. Allman points out the high cost of rearing big-brained young and of maintaining such an energetically expensive organ.

If you are interested in how animals use their brains to deal with ever-changing environments and why our brain evolved to be so much more powerful than any other species', then this book is for you.

From small beginnings . . ........2003-05-10

This is a sweeping examination of evolution's path leading to that mass of gray matter behind your brows. Allman has synthesized a wealth of research in producing this study. He explains in a clear, interesting style how natural selection has spent the last 500 million years tinkering with life to build complex systems from simpler ones. He is a forceful writer, supplementing a fine text with superb illustrative material to build his narrative. It's a refreshing view of natural selection's power of innovation.

Allman draws on the detailed research undertaken in recent years that has mapped the brain and detailed its operations. Like all life, beginnings were simple, but small variations among organisms had the potential for important roles. Deep in the Precambrian, floating cells developed appendages leading to hair-like structures we call "cilia". The cilia adopted dual roles: sensing the environment and responding to it. Allman explains how gene duplication led to opportunities for experiments. This process demonstrates how we can track many of steps leading to today's life forms. The original genes are usually still resident, with enhancements providing new functions added over the passing generations.

The author's explanation of the workings of chemistry in brain functions is worth close attention. Behaviour is the result of brain activity, but the interactions of various parts and functions of the brain elude simple analysis. One example is the brain chemical [neurotransmitter] serotonin which is found throughout the brain. It's impact gives monkeys their social structure while adding to the risk of suicide in humans. Neurochemistry alone doesn't explain the expansion of the human brain, nor does the author stop there. He goes on to show how bipedalism, diet, language and social behaviour all working in self-reinforcing feedback loops led to the gob of tissue that takes a fifth of our body resources to keep working. Even global climate changes played a role, coming at a time when our species was just prepared to contend with them.

The number and impact of revelations in this book are almost beyond counting. The "urban myth" that women live longer than men because of improved health practices has been disproved both by history and anthropology. A study reaching back into the 18th Century demonstrates that women have outlived men at least that long ago. Among the great apes, chimpanzee females also outlive their mates. Orangutans and gorillas have nearly parallel life spans between genders. There are also studies showing how caring fathers have extended life spans. His analysis of the development of colour vision is another novel thesis. Colour perception arose only 40 million years ago, after the demise of the dinosaurs. This raises again, the question of whether the emergence of flowering plants, which were toxic to those creatures, helped speed their demise.

While this book is not a light read, it's an informative and edifying one. Allman deals with complex topics. Adding to the elaborate range of material involving the brain, behaviour and social issues is the background of the immense time spans required in dealing with these questions in the context of evolution. Given all these constraints, he has met the challenges of the task credibly and lucidly. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Mind expanding material.......2001-01-12

How has the emergence of the super-sized human brain depended on the evolution of a good set of teeth? Why are the stomach and brain closely linked across the brambles of genetic code? This book answers not only those intriguing questions but also many others concerning the emergence of the brain on this planet. Especially fascinating to me was the explanation of the homeobox phenomenon, a process by which very complex mutations can arise in an organism without the mutation risking certain disaster. Being a non-biologist, I found this homeobox material quite fascinating, for it opened my eyes to how evolution could generate incredibly complex features without requiring a hundred trillion years for all the right components to come together all at once. Equally interesting are the many vestiges of our evolutionary past that are still embedded in the way our brains process information. For example, the sectors into which our brains split each of our retinae today for the purpose of signal processing: these are left overs from the days when our ancestors were prey and not predators, back when our ancestors' eyes were mounted to the sides of their heads! In summary, I would like to say that in reading this book, while just sitting in my chair, I felt myself moving up another notch on the evolutionary tree. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the miracle that is the development of brains and conscious life on this planet. A very pleasant read.

How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now (Science Masters Series)

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A Review of How Brains Think
What to do next?
Calvin's Neocortical Darwin Machine
suitable for beginners
ALL THE BRAIN'S A STAGE

How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now (Science Masters Series)
William H. Calvin
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 046507278X

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William Calvin, a neurophysiologist and author of The River That Flows Uphill: A Journey from the Big Bang to the Big Brain, attempts to reclaim the study of human consciousness from physicists like Roger Penrose. Physicists, Calvin suggests, reduce the mind to subatomic particles and mathematical equations, whereas those in his specialty see the seat of consciousness and intelligence in higher levels of brain physiology--the neurons, synapses, and cortex. Calvin is a Darwinist who regards the unique level of human consciousness as the product of evolutionary forces that began with the ice ages two million years ago. The human response to this natural threat, he argues, was to develop mental faculties that allowed high-level communication and, thus, cooperation, leading to complex language capabilities and the distinguishing human characteristic of abstract thought.

Customer Reviews:

A Review of How Brains Think.......2006-12-02

Calvin contends that brains (OR COMPUTERS!)
are able to THINK by virtue of being "Darwin
machines," machines that emulate biological
evolution but on a much reduced time scale.
Calvin's Darwin machines possess six essential
properties:
1. Patterns are recognized and manipulated.
2. The patterns are copied and
3. modified.
4. Patterns are evaluated during their use
and compete for limited storage space.
5. The values assigned to the respective patterns
measure their success when used to control actions
of some agent in an environment.
6. The best patterns are retained for future
reuse while poorer ones are discarded.
Calvin attempts to show how these 6 processes
might be obtained with realistic biological
neural networks. I found these latter arguments
to be incomplete and unconvincing. To be fair
Calvin refers the reader to another of his books
THE CEREBRAL CODE for a more detailed discussion.
I need to read that book but have yet to do so.
I do believe, however, that modern artificial
intelligence software does qualify as a Darwin
machine according to Calvin's criteria (see,
for example my Asa H, Transactions of the Kansas
Academy of Science, vol. 109, No. 3/4. pg 159,
2006, R. Jones)

What to do next?.......2003-05-03

Calvin offers an evolutionary description of the development of human intelligence. He's very careful to avoid using "consciousness" since Dennett, Humphreys, Pinker and others have firmly employed that term. Calvin cites Piaget's "intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do next" as a foundation thesis. From this he compares human mental talents with those of other animals, mostly primates, to demonstrate evolutionary roots for our intelligence. Behaviour issues common to everyday life become visible evidence for what is going on in our brains. Calvin manages to take his analysis into the physical processes that occur as we decide on our actions. It's a well written and "down to earth" explanation of many questions we have on what intelligence is and how we use it.

Piaget's comment reflects the growing knowledge of brain processes. Much of the brain's time is spent collecting, storing, retrieving and applying information. This means that both "unconscious" events and our expressions and actions only come about after numerous and complicated signal processing has already occurred. Calvin describes in both text and graphics how neurons are constructed, convey data, and interact within the brain. Clearly, nothing is instantaneous and many elements are competing for dominance during every moment awake. Clear, too, is the notion that while other primates have many talents to deal with their surroundings, none possess the powers evolution gave humans.

What drives these powerful mental abilities? He rebuffs the idea of the "quantum brain". It's too deep in the brain's structure - "in the subbasement of physics". That's too far removed from areas of vision, speech, and memory. There are certainly quantum events going on with all that chemical and electrical activity inside your skull, but Calvin sees these forces as far to deep to have direct impact on mental processes. Calvin is more concerned with the human level of analysis. One proposal he adopts wholeheartedly, but without attribution, is Daniel Dennett's concept of the "multiple drafts model" of thinking and expression. Calvin, to his credit, outstrips even Dennett's abilities of description in depicting this process. He shows, for example, how the brain's memory storage facility considers many images before it resolves that the round thing flying past is a tennis ball. It's an exquisite example, and you perceive clearly how many other daily occurrences are resolved in a similar manner.

The accumulation of evidence about our evolutionary roots, the environmental changes forced on us and the rise of language and use of syntax are all contained within a device Calvin labels the "Darwin Machine." The Machine has six "essentials" which cover topics like replication, mutation and success in adaptation. He demonstrates how the "essentials" provide a mechanism for complexity from simplicity. Where some creatures modified things like limbs, teeth or hair, it was our brain that evolved from simple to complex.

While evolution of the human brain isn't a new topic, Calvin presents a better summary of its roots and operations than most cognitive scientists. This is a fine book to start any study of the brain, but must be enhanced by other, more complete, works. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Calvin's Neocortical Darwin Machine.......2002-01-05

This book is an attempt to "pull together all of the essentials.....of a darwinian process" and "describe a specific neural mechanism that could implement such a process in primate neocortex." Calvin is an advocate of the idea that brain-based darwinian processes are what provides brains with what we call "consciousness" and "intelligence". The first six chapters do the pulling together and chapter seven presents the proposed mechanism. Chapter 8 explores implications of darwinian brain processes for artificial intelligence.

As we plod along towards Alan Turing's dream of constructing intelligent machines, there are a few road-blocks we need to get around. Calvin mentions that any explanation of biological intelligence ought to have implications for artificial intelligence. He admits that, "the ad-hoc schemes of AI might also produce intelligent robots", but he clearly likes the idea that the most efficient path to intelligent man-made devices that can duplicate human mental abilities (what Calvin quaintly calls a "workalike") is to learn the essentials of how biological brains work and then apply those principles to the problem of making a workalike. One road-block is the fact that so many AI researchers ignore the task of reverse engineering the human brain or, at best, they assume that what was known about brains in the 1940's is enough. Unfortunately, I doubt that Calvin's hop-skip-and-jump over this issue will move any AI researchers away from their "ad-hoc schemes". Even AI researchers who like the idea of evolutionary processes pay little attention to the idea of adapting the physiological mechanisms of biological brains to evolutionary computing.

A second road-block is the distinction that is usually made between hardware and software. Turing was among the first to recognize how to use electronic devices to implement the power and beauty of this distinction, and most AI researchers remain devoted to hardware-software duality. Unfortunately, biological brains were not designed by an electrical engineer. It thus becomes a danger that biologists will mistakenly attempt to make sense of biological brains by looking at brain processes through the distorting lenses of hardware-software duality. I think that Calvin gets caught in this trap of dualism and it deflects him from paying close enough attention to the details of how biological brains really work.

Calvin's dualistic thinking starts with the harmless division of brain processes into two types, those that depend on "cerebral ruts" (hardware) and those that dance more freely through the brain and so are able to function like "software".....Calvin usually calls these "firing patterns". The dangerous step comes when Calvin suggests that the pattern of action potentials in any particular neocortical minicolumn can be replicated and spread through the cortex like a piece of software code and be "played" on the millions of other minicolumns in the same way you can play a million copies of a CD on a million CD players......the key difference being that while all CD players are designed to do basically the same task, the various cortical minicolumns can all have their own unique "ruts" and the copies of the firing patterns are not exact duplicates. This allows for a "cerebral symphony" rather than just a million-fold amplification of the same tune and a "survival of the fittest" process whereby those firing patterns that resonate best with the existing pool of "ruts" will dominate our consciousness and generate intelligent behavior.

Allegorically, this is an appealing model of cortical function, and the sort of evolutionary mechanism that AI researchers like to build into computers. Unfortunately, biological brains were not made by engineers. Where does Calvin go wrong?

For Calvin, "copying" is the essence of darwinism, but people such as Stuart Kauffman (see his, "The Origins of Order") and Freeman Dyson (see his, "Origin of Life") have long ago made the point that evolution does not REQUIRE copying. Life as it now exists involves molecular replication, but that is just a special trick that proved useful for living organisms. Life probably had an initial "metabolic" period without molecular replication. George Dyson (in his book, "Darwin Among the Machines") has pointed out that man-made machines (such as industrial robots) can evolve without replication.

Is there another way that evolutionary processes might exist in biological brains without the emphasis that Calvin places on copying? Gerald Edelman's theory of "Neural Darwinism" (see his book by that name) provides an alternative to Calvin's emphasis on copying. Anyone who reads Calvin's theory (chapter 7) should compare it to Edelman's theory. My guess is that Edelman provides a better framework for thinking about evolutionary processes in biological brains, but Calvin's theory is more accessible and "intuitive", so it may be better as an introduction to the importance of evolutionary processes in the brain.

Calvin does not dogmatically push the "darwin machine" mechanism described in chapter 7, and, in fact, seems to invite people to simply skip that chapter. He devotes considerable space (particularly chapter 3) to discussion of trying to find the level of detail required to find the essence of how biological brains produce consciousness and intelligent behavior. I suspect that Crick (in his "The Astonishing Hypothesis") and Edelman are closer to identifying this critical level, with Calvin just a bit too reluctant to delve into the details of how synapses work. Although Calvin does touch on the function of synapses briefly in chapter 7, he spends considerable space clumping the study of synaptic learning mechanisms in with quantum consciousness theories as examples of inappropriate attempts at reductionism. But even if Calvin has slightly missed the mark, he provides an accessible account of why it makes sense to continue trying to identify and elucidate evolutionary processes in the brain.

suitable for beginners.......2001-02-01

This book provides a clear introduction to the secular materialistic viewpoint on the mind. Easy enough for layman to comprehend. Although Calvin's accuse to quantum physicists may be too vigorous and unfair, I still recommend this book for those who find Crick's "The Astonishing Hypothesis" too dense and long.

ALL THE BRAIN'S A STAGE.......2000-06-13

Coming attractions on Calvin's marquee are AI blobs of super intelligence and since they need not move nor eat I guess one could pull one along like a little red wagon. Author sets some kind of mark for hubris and keeps plugging his next book, CEREBRAL CODES. Although he admits that improved brain imagery would be required to test his ideas, he sounds certain these little details don't matter much. What are his ideas? He imports them wholly from darwinism: there must be competition in the cortex to account for changes and new ideas; the winner must have a copying mechanism in the brain (similar to RNA and DNA) to sort out the chaos. He brings on stage a Greek chorus of neurons to throw out the losers.

My biggest problem with the book was Calvin's idiosyncratic choice of terms. He seems to demand some potion of free will in the neuron's selection of input signals; he sees no value in random selection nor mutation. Intelligence he sees as "good guessing." Cerebral codes he sees as the winners of the intense competition over what will be copied in short term memory. He thinks Penrose's quantum field or"microtubles of neuron's cytoskeleton" is just another word for spirit -- the ghost in the machine, but his own stealth candidate is "dynamic patchwork quilt" of patterns. I enjoyed his metaphors but they need not conflict with Penrose's. What he has done with his cerebral codes is encrypt his own common reductionism of portraying man's mind as just a bag of neurons -- like his buddy Francis Crick (THE ASTONISHING HYPOTHESIS). There is nothing new in this book except new terminology of which we are already stuffed.

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The Evolving Brain: The Mind and the Neural Control of Behavior
C. H. Vanderwolf
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 038734229X

Book Description

Present-day behavioral and cognitive neuroscience is based on the idea that the conventional philosophical theory of the mind provides a reliable guide to the functional organization of the brain. Consequently, much effort has been expended in a search for the neural basis of such psychological categories as memory, attention, emotion, motivation, and perception. This book argues that (a) conventional psychological concepts originate from the philosophical speculations of ancient Greek philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle; (b) there is serious doubt that these ancient philosophical analyses provide a reliable guide to the understanding of the human mind, human behavior, or the organization of the brain; and (c) that modern scientific studies of animal behavior provide a better guide to the study of the functional organization of the brain than is provided by conventional psychological concepts.

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Evolving Brain
Terrence Dixon , and Tony Buzan
Manufacturer: Harcourt School
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Evolving Brain
Tony & Terence Dixon Buzan
Manufacturer: Holt, Rinehart & Winston No Date
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000S61HFS

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Evolving Brain, The
Tony and Dixon, Terence Buzzan
Manufacturer: Hotl, Rinehart and winston
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000JRBG52

Evolving Connectionist Systems: Methods and Applications in Bioinformatics, Brain Study and Intelligent Machines (Perspectives in Neural Computing)

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An exceptional book for computational biologists
Real-time neural network with a host of applications

Evolving Connectionist Systems: Methods and Applications in Bioinformatics, Brain Study and Intelligent Machines (Perspectives in Neural Computing)
Nikola Kasabov
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1852334002

Book Description

Many methods and models have been proposed for solving difficult problems such as prediction, planning and knowledge discovery in application areas such as bioinformatics, speech and image analysis. Most, however, are designed to deal with static processes which will not change over time. Some processes - such as speech, biological information and brain signals - are not static, however, and in these cases different models need to be used which can trace, and adapt to, the changes in the processes in an incremental, on-line mode, and often in real time. This book presents generic computational models and techniques that can be used for the development of evolving, adaptive modelling systems. The models and techniques used are connectionist-based (as the evolving brain is a highly suitable paradigm) and, where possible, existing connectionist models have been used and extended. The first part of the book covers methods and techniques, and the second focuses on applications in bioinformatics, brain study, speech, image, and multimodal systems. It also includes an extensive bibliography and an extended glossary. Evolving Connectionist Systems is aimed at anyone who is interested in developing adaptive models and systems to solve challenging real world problems in computing science or engineering. It will also be of interest to researchers and students in life sciences who are interested in finding out how information science and intelligent information processing methods can be applied to their domains.

Customer Reviews:

An exceptional book for computational biologists.......2003-06-07

This exceptional book provides a broad overview of the methods of extracting the knowledge (or in other words building model/system/theory) from the data in various areas: from information theory and artificial intelligence to genetics. It can be very useful for biologists, who wish to use modern computational methods for analysis of microarray data, regulatory networks, cancer, analysis of clinical trials, etc.

The first part (first seven chapters) of the book is devoted to the methods used in connectionists systems and here readers can find detailed description of the algorithms. In the second part (six chapters), which represents application of these methods, the book has a chapter devoted to the data analysis, modeling, and knowledge discovery in bioinformatics so it can be interesting for the biologists. This chapter describes how the neural network paradigm can be used in molecular biology and, in particular, for analysis in relatively new area -- microarray technology. The huge amount of data that were obtained in this area is still waiting for the efficient methods of knowledge extracting. In this chapter readers can also find the examples of using evolving connectionists learning systems for solving the problems of finding the patterns from DNA/RNA sequences, identification of intron/exon binding sites, gene profiling, protein structure prediction and dynamic cell modeling.

This excellent book is full of interesting examples, classification schemes, and figures.
Although this book will be more interesting for readers, which have been working in networking, it can be useful also for all researchers and students and any type of readers interesting in data analysis. This book is outstanding introduction for readers unfamiliar with the learning systems. The extended glossary and full-length reference list will help a lot for readers inexperienced in this area.

Real-time neural network with a host of applications.......2003-05-08

I found this book to be a landmark contribution to the state-of-the-art in neural networks pardigm. It offers some exciting neural network topologies and a distinctly new kind of thinking -'local learning' in neural networks. The author Prof. Nik Kasabov deserves to be congratulated for writing this excellent book. His explanation throughout the book is very lucid and to the point. He introduces the concept of "evolving connectionism" in a succinct way. He included a rich assortment of connectionist methods, right from the scratch, with a clear exposition of the underlying training algorithms. The applications presented in the latter part of the book are as diverse as bioinformatics, financial engineering, speech recognition, brain study and image & video data processing. The authority with which these topics are presented speaks volumes of the enormous research work undertaken by Prof. Kasabov and his students. The references and extended glosary provided at the end are extremely useful to the reader. Another important aspect of this book is that it is suitable for all levels of readers such as student, researcher and practitioner. I started teaching some aspects of this book from this semester onwards. It is well received by the students. It must be in the shelves of those who look for the latest research in the area of neural networks. I enjoyed reading this book. Finally, if the phrase "real-time neural networks" is also added in the tag line (sub title) of the book, it could attract more users.

How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now

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How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now
William H. Calvin
Manufacturer: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Neuropsychology | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Cognitive | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Behavioral Psychology | Behavioral Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0297816861

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HOW BRAINS THINK: EVOLVING INTELLIGENCE, THEN AND NOW.

ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Neuropsychology | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Behavioral Psychology | Behavioral Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 029781639X

Book Description

A new theory about Intelligence,from a well-known writer on brains and evolutionwhich puts foward a drawinian model of how the mind works.

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