An examination of how widely distributed and specialized activities of the brain are flexibly and effectively coordinated. A fundamental shift is occurring in neuroscience and related disciplines. In the past, researchers focused on functional specialization of the brain, discovering complex processing strategies based on convergence and divergence in slowly adapting anatomical architectures. Yet for the brain to cope with ever-changing and unpredictable circumstances, it needs strategies with richer interactive short-term dynamics. Recent research has revealed ways in which the brain effectively coordinates widely distributed and specialized activities to meet the needs of the moment. This book explores these findings, examining the functions, mechanisms, and manifestations of distributed dynamical coordination in the brain and mind across different species and levels of organization. The book identifies three basic functions of dynamic coordination: contextual disambiguation, dynamic grouping, and dynamic routing. It considers the role of dynamic coordination in temporally structured activity and explores these issues at different levels, from synaptic and local circuit mechanisms to macroscopic system dynamics, emphasizing their importance for cognition, behavior, and psychopathology. Contributors Evan Balaban, György Buzsáki, Nicola S. Clayton, Maurizio Corbetta, Robert Desimone, Kamran Diba, Shimon Edelman, Andreas K. Engel, Yves Fregnac, Pascal Fries, Karl Friston, Ann Graybiel, Sten Grillner, Uri Grodzinski, John-Dylan Haynes, Laurent Itti, Erich D. Jarvis, Jon H. Kaas, J.A. Scott Kelso, Peter König, Nancy J. Kopell, Ilona Kovács, Andreas Kreiter, Anders Lansner, Gilles Laurent, Jörg Lücke, Mikael Lundqvist, Angus MacDonald, Kevan Martin, Mayank Mehta, Lucia Melloni, Earl K. Miller, Bita Moghaddam, Hannah Monyer, Edvard I. Moser, May-Britt Moser, Danko Nikolic, William A. Phillips, Gordon Pipa, Constantin Rothkopf, Terrence J. Sejnowski, Steven M. Silverstein, Wolf Singer, Catherine Tallon-Baudry, Roger D. Traub, Jochen Triesch, Peter Uhlhaas, Christoph von der Malsburg, Thomas Weisswange, Miles Whittington, Matthew Wilson

This second edition presents the enormous progress made in recent years in the many subfields related to the two great questions : how does the brain work? and, How can we build intelligent machines? This second edition greatly increases the coverage of models of fundamental neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience, and neural network approaches to language. (Midwest).

The Cerebellum and Cognition pulls together a preeminent group of authors. The cerebellum has been previously considered as a highly complex structure involved only with motor control. The cerebellum is essential to nonmotor functions, and recent research has revealed new medically important roles of the cerebellum and cognitive processes. - Selected for inclusion in Doody's Core Titles 2013, an essential collection development tool for health sciences libraries - Comprehensive coverage of cerebellum in motor control and cognition - New developments regarding the cerebellum and motor systems - Therapeutic implications of cerebellar contributions to cognition - Preeminent group of contributors

Previous studies showed that both healthy and pathological aging are associated with changes in brain structure and function of the mature human brain. The most prominent anatomical alteration are changes in prefrontal cortex morphology, volume loss and reduced white-matter integrity and hippocampal atrophy. Cognitive decline affects mainly the performance of episodic memory, speed of sensory information processing, working memory, inhibitory function and long-term memory. It has been also proposed that due to the aforementioned changes the aging brain engages in compensatory brain mechanism such as a broader activation of cortical regions (mainly frontal) rather than specialized activation. Evidence suggests that similar changes occur with pathological aging but to a greater extent. In this case information flow is disrupted due to neurodegeneration, functional activation of posterior (occipito-temporal) regions is decreased and as a consequence the brain fails to process sensorial input in the ventral pathway and cognitive deficits appear. In the last years, functional alterations associated with aging have been studied using the mathematical notion of graph theory that offers an integrative approach since it examines different properties of the brain network: 1) Organization level 2) amount of local information processing, 3) information flow 4) cortical community structure and 5) identification of functional / anatomical hubs. So, graph theory offers an attractive way to model brain networks organization and to quantify their pathological deviations. Previous studies have already employed this mathematical notion and demonstrated that age-related neurodegeneration is often accompanied by loss of optimal network organization either due to diminished local information processing or due to progressive isolation of distant brain regions. They have also found that changes in network properties may be present even in the preclinical phase, which could be taken as a biological marker of disease.

Tone of Voice and Mind is a synthesis of findings from neurophysiology (how neurons produce subjective feeling), neuropsychology (how the human cerebral hemispheres undertake complementary information-processing), intonation studies (how the emotions are encoded in the tone of voice), and music perception (how human beings hear and feel harmony). The focus is on the psychological characteristics that distinguish us from other primate species. At a neuronal level, we are just another mammalian species, but the functional specialization of the human cerebral hemispheres has resulted in three outstanding, uniquely-human talents: language, tool-usage and music. To understand how the human brain coordinates those behaviors is to understand who we are. (Series B)