This timely new volume presents broad-based and wide-ranging contributions on all aspects of vision. The material is grouped for presentation in a logical fashion in five main themes: peripheral processing; sensory integration in superior colliculus; organization of visual projections; development and plasticity; and neuronal encoding and visually guided behavior. The material spans from molecules to cognition, including overt behavior, and synaptic and membrane levels of analysis. The species studied also range over diverse phyla, while contributors too form a diverse group representing Europe, North America, and Asia. The Visually Responsive Neuron is an exciting and informative addition to the well known Progress in Brain Research series.
Internationally renowned researchers discuss how the various parts of the brain process and integrate visual signals, providing up to date original findings, reviews, and theoretical proposals on visual processing. This book addresses the basic mechanisms of visual perception as well as issues such as neuronal plasticity, functional reorganization and recovery, residual vision, and sensory substitution. Knowledge of the basic mechanisms by which our brain can analyze, reconstruct, and interpret images in the external world is of fundamental importance for our capacity to understand the nature and causes of visual deficits, such as those resulting from ischemia, abnormal development, neuro-degenerative disorders, and normal aging. It is also essential to our goal of developing better therapeutic strategies, such as early diagnosis, visual training, behavioral rehabilitation of visual functions, and visual implants.
An examination of the link between the vigor with which we move and the value that the brain assigns to the goal of the movement. Why do we reflexively run toward people we love, but only walk toward others? In Vigor, Reza Shadmehr and Alaa Ahmed examine the link between how the brain assigns value to things and how it controls our movements. They find that brain regions thought to be principally involved in decision making also affect movement vigor—and that brain regions thought to be principally responsible for movement also bias patterns of decision making. Shadmehr and Ahmed first consider the relationship of value and vigor from a behavioral and mathematical perspective, considering a series of fascinating observations—including, for example, data showing that people in certain cities tend to walk faster than those living elsewhere—through the lens of optimal foraging theory. They then go on to explore the neural basis of vigor and valuation, synthesizing results from experiments that have measured activity in various brain structures and neuromodulators, including dopamine and serotonin. They speculate that in the future, technologies may be able to predict our personal preferences by measuring our movements; through the vigor with which we move, we unwittingly reveal one of our well-guarded secrets: how much we value the object of our attention.
This Oxford Handbook offers a comprehensive and authoritative review of important developments in computational and mathematical psychology. With chapters written by leading scientists across a variety of subdisciplines, it examines the field's influence on related research areas such as cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, clinical psychology, and neuroscience. TheHandbook emphasizes examples and applications of the latest research, and will appeal to readers possessing various levels of modeling experience. The Oxford Handbook of Computational and mathematical Psychology covers the key developments in elementary cognitive mechanisms (signal detection, information processing, reinforcement learning), basic cognitive skills (perceptual judgment, categorization, episodic memory), higher-level cognition (Bayesian cognition, decision making, semantic memory, shape perception), modeling tools (Bayesian estimation and other new model comparison methods), and emerging new directions in computation and mathematical psychology (neurocognitive modeling, applications to clinical psychology, quantum cognition). The Handbook would make an ideal graduate-level textbook for courses in computational and mathematical psychology. Readers ranging from advanced undergraduates to experienced faculty members and researchers in virtually any area of psychology--including cognitive science and related social and behavioral sciences such as consumer behavior and communication--will find the text useful.
Animals living in groups are often linked to group or family members stronger than to other conspecifics, and form stronger coalitions (often based on genetic relatedness) within such groups. Effective cooperation within a group requires the preference for proximity of group members, suppression of aggression toward conspecifics, an ability to perceive and respond to social signals and to change (often synchronize) behavior accordingly. Birds have long been used for a number of investigations involving sensory perception, learning, feeding strategies and vocal communication. Recently, they have been proposed as ideal model species even for psychiatric disorders affecting social cohesion, such as autism spectrum disorder. The physiological mechanisms and neural systems underlying different forms of sociability (sexual and parental bonding, group preference, nesting, care for offspring, migration) can often be studied easier in birds, since their social behavioral repertoire, as a taxon (but sometimes also as individuals), is more diverse than that of mammals. By contrast with laboratory rodents, birds rely less on olfactory cues. Rather, they tend to use visual and acoustic signals for social interactions, much like humans. Comparative approach and evolutionary relevance of studies using avian species have already yielded valuable results in several fields of neuroscience: learning and memory (imprinting), acoustic communication (birdsong), neurogenesis (seasonal changes in the song network). With the advent of robust novel methods in molecular biology, genomics and proteomics, information technology and electronic engineering; and also based upon an ever improving battery of behavioral tests, avian research in social cohesion has likely gained a new impetus.
This book concentrates on the organizational level of neurons and neuronal networks under the unifying theme "The Self-Organizing Brain - From Growth Cones to Functional Networks". Such a theme is attractive because it incorporates all phases in the emergence of complexity and (adaptive) organization, as well as involving processes that remain operative in the mature state. The order of the sections follows successive levels of organization from neuronal growth cones, neurite formation, neuronal morphology and signal processing to network development, network dynamics and, finally, to the formation of functional circuits.
Comprehensive Human Physiology is a significantly important publication on physiology, presenting state-of-the-art knowledge about both the molecular mechanisms and the integrative regulation of body functions. This is the first time that such a broad range of perspectives on physiology have been combined to provide a unified overview of the field. This groundbreaking two-volume set reveals human physiology to be a highly dynamic science rooted in the ever-continuing process of learning more about life. Each chapter contains a wealth of original data, clear illustrations, and extensive references, making this a valuable and easy-to-use reference. This is the quintessential reference work in the fields of physiology and pathophysiology, essential reading for researchers, lecturers and advanced students.
Following the successful format of the first volume on long- term potentiation -- a leading candidate for the neuronal basis of learning and memory -- Volume 2 brings together the most recent data and hypotheses by top neuroscientists regarding the mechanisms of this phenomenon and of long-term depression (LTD). The book is divided into several sections covering different aspects of the field ranging from molecular mechanisms of plasticity to computational neurobiology. It revisits some of the major points covered in Volume 1, updating them in this fast-moving field. It also introduces several new issues that have arisen since then. Of the many possible new topics that could have been added, the editors have focused on retrograde messengers and the mechanisms and functions of LTP and LTD because they are the subject of much interest, research, and controversy. The section on retrograde messengers deals primarily with nitric oxide.
