book announcement--O'Reilly

[Jud Wolfskill]

I thought readers of the Connectionists List might be interested in this 
book.  For more information please visit 
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?sid=16CDFF8A-3F4A-4FB5-B713-D8725D0A6969&ttype=2&tid=3345

Best,
Jud

Computational Explorations in Cognitive Neuroscience
Understanding the Mind by Simulating the Brain
Randall C. O'Reilly and Yuko Munakata
foreword by James L. McClelland

The goal of computational cognitive neuroscience is to understand how the 
brain embodies the mind by using biologically based computational models 
comprising networks of neuronlike units. This text, based on a course 
taught by Randall O'Reilly and Yuko Munakata over the past several years, 
provides an in-depth introduction to the main ideas in the field. The 
neural units in the simulations use equations based directly on the ion 
channels that govern the behavior of real neurons, and the neural networks 
incorporate anatomical and physiological properties of the neocortex. Thus 
the text provides the student with knowledge of the basic biology of the 
brain as well as the computational skills needed to simulate large-scale 
cognitive phenomena.

The text consists of two parts. The first part covers basic neural 
computation mechanisms: individual neurons, neural networks, and learning 
mechanisms. The second part covers large-scale brain area organization and 
cognitive phenomena: perception and attention, memory, language, and 
higher-level cognition. The second part is relatively self-contained and 
can be used separately for mechanistically oriented cognitive neuroscience 
courses. Integrated throughout the text are more than forty different 
simulation models, many of them full-scale research-grade models, with 
friendly interfaces and accompanying exercises. The simulation software 
(PDP++, available for all major platforms) and simulations can be 
downloaded free of charge from the Web. Exercise solutions are available, 
and the text includes full information on the software.

Randall C. O'Reilly is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology 
and at the Institute for Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, 
Boulder. Yuko Munakata is Assistant Professor in Developmental Cognitive 
Neuroscience at the University of Denver.

8 x 9, 512 pp., 213 illus., paper ISBN 0-262-65054-1
A Bradford Book


Jud Wolfskill
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MIT Press
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