This book describes the types of computation that can be performed by biologically plausible neural networks and shows how they may be imple mented in different systems of the brain. It is structured in three se ctions, each of which addresses a different need. The first introduces and analyzes the operation of several fundamental types of neural net works. The second discusses real neural networks in several brain syst ems, and shows how it is becoming possible to construct theories about the way different parts of the brain work. This section also offers a n indication of the various...

What produces emotions? Why do we have emotions? How do we have emotions? Why do emotional states feel like something? This book seeks explanations of emotion by considering these questions. Emotion continues to be a topic of enormous scientific interest. This new book, a successor to The Brain and Emotion, (OUP, 1998), describes the nature, functions, and brain mechanisms that underlie both emotion and motivation. Emotion Explained goes beyond examining brain mechanisms of emotion, by proposing a theory of what emotions are, and an evolutionary, Darwinian, theory of the adaptive value of...

What produces emotions? Why do we have emotions? How do we have emotions? Why do emotional states feel like something? This book seeks explanations of emotion by considering these questions. Emotion continues to be a topic of enormous scientific interest. Emotion Explained describes the nature, functions, and brain mechanisms that underlie both emotion and motivation. However it goes beyond examining brain mechanisms of emotion, by proposing a theory of what emotions are, and an evolutionary, Darwinian, theory of the adaptive value of emotion. It also shows that there is a clear relationship...

Memory, attention, and decision-making are three major areas of cognitive neuroscience. They are, however, frequently studied in isolation, using a range of models to understand them. This book brings a unified approach to understanding these three processes, show how these fundamental functions can be understood in a common and unifying framework.

The activity of neurons in the brain is noisy in that their firing times are random when they are firing at a given rate. This introduces a random or stochastic property into brain processing which we show in this book is fundamental to understanding many aspects of brain function, including probabilistic decision making, perception, memory recall, short-term memory, attention, and even creativity. We show that in many of these processes, the noise caused by the random neuronal firing times is useful. However, this stochastic dynamics can be unstable or overstable, and we show that the...