This book fulfills that need by combining studies of anatomy and physiology and mathematical and computer modeling to obtain a quantitative description of cortical functions. The material is presented didactically; it starts with descriptive anatomy and comprehensively examines all aspects of modeling. The book gradually leads the reader from a macroscopic view of cortical anatomy and a description of standard electrophysiological properties of single neurons to neural network models and synchronous firing chains of neurons. Along the way, the most modern trends of neural network modeling are...

Neurophysiologists are often accused by colleagues in the physical sci ences of designing experiments without any underlying hypothesis. This impression is attributable to the ease of getting lost in the ever-increasing sea of professional publications which do not state explicitly the ultimate goal of the research. On the other hand, many of the explicit models for brain function in the past were so far removed from experimental reality that they had very little impact on further research. It seems that one needs much intimate experience with the real nerv-. ous system before a reasonable...