Models of the Mind - How Physics Engineering and Mathematics Have Shaped Our Understanding of the Brain

Grace Lindsay

Summary

The human brain is made up of 85 billion neurons, which are connected by over 100 trillion synapses. For more than a century, a diverse array of researchers searched for a language that could be used to capture the essence of what these neurons do and how they communicate – and how those communications create thoughts, perceptions and actions. The language they were looking for was mathematics, and we would not be able to understand the brain as we do today without it. 
 
In Models of the Mind, author and computational neuroscientist Grace Lindsay explains how mathematical models have allowed scientists to understand and describe many of the brain's processes, including decision-making, sensory processing, quantifying memory, and more. She introduces readers to the most important concepts in modern neuroscience, and highlights the tensions that arise when the abstract world of mathematical modelling collides with the messy details of biology.  
 
Each chapter of Models of the Mind focuses on mathematical tools that have been applied in a particular area of neuroscience, progressing from the simplest building block of the brain – the individual neuron – through to circuits of interacting neurons, whole brain areas and even the behaviours that brains command. In addition, Grace examines the history of the field, starting with experiments done on frog legs in the late eighteenth century and building to the large models of artificial neural networks that form the basis of modern artificial intelligence. Throughout, she reveals the value of using the elegant language of mathematics to describe the machinery of neuroscience.

Available since: 03/04/2022.

Print length: 320 pages.

Science & Technology

Other books that might interest you

The Back Pain Bible - A...

Christopher J. Kidawski

ELIMINATE YOUR BACK PAIN WITHOUT DRUGS, NEEDLES, SURGERY, OR CHIROPRACTIC!
What would be the first thing you would do if you woke up three months from now with ZERO back pain? How would your life be different? Would you exercise more? Play with your kids? Schedule a skiing vacation? Most books offer information – this book offers transformation!
Do any of these statements sound like you?
“My back hurts first thing in the morning, then loosens up around mid day.”
“I can’t bend or twist without pain, and had to stop playing a sport I love.”
“I have a stabbing pain in the middle of my lower back.”
“My back hurts and there is pain going down my leg.”
Imagine moving freely through your day bending down, lifting odd objects, or playing a game of golf with your buddies without a care in the world!
Back pain is most always a symptom emanating from another area in the body. Chris teaches you how to find and treat the PROBLEM causing your back pain, rather than just treating the symptom.
In this book you will learn:
•Why you were already in trouble before you started to feel pain.
•How to discover the root cause of your pain, and how to get rid of it.
•A 4-minute exercise that will erase sciatica issues for good.
•How to restore the normal function to more than just the tissue of your lower back to keep your back pain away for good.
•How doing one simple thing will increase your results from stretching and decrease your pain by 10x.
•How to work through your pain safely while returning yourself to your normal sports, or activities.
You were born to move, let's do it!

Show book

Wait Five Minutes - Weatherlore...

Shelley Ingram, Willow G. Mullins

The weather governs our lives. It fills gaps in conversations, determines our dress, and influences our architecture. No matter how much our lives may have moved indoors, no matter how much we may rely on technology, we still monitor the weather. Wait Five Minutes: Weatherlore in the Twenty-First Century draws from folkloric, literary, and scientific theory to offer up new ways of thinking about this most ancient of phenomena.Weatherlore is a concept that describes the folk beliefs and traditions about the weather that are passed down casually among groups of people. From detailing personal experiences at picnics and suburban lawns to critically analyzing storm stories, novels, and flood legends, contributors offer engaging multidisciplinary perspectives on weatherlore.As we move further into the twenty-first century, an increasing awareness of climate change and its impacts on daily life calls for a folkloristic reckoning with the weather and a rising need to examine vernacular understandings of weather and climate. Weatherlore helps us understand and shape global political conversations about climate change and biopolitics at the same time that it influences individual, group, and regional lives and identities. We use weather, and thus its folklore, to make meaning of ourselves, our groups, and, quite literally, our world.

Show book

Extraordinary Products: The...

G.H. Lance

Extraordinary Products: The Ultimate Guide to Digital Product Creation and Outsourcing, Learn All About How to Make Big Profits Through Digital ProductsThese days, you don’t have to be super creative to produce your own unique product. You may do what so many others do, and that's to upgrade something that exists or make it better. You may produce a product mash-up and produce something that is your own. For example, you have some particular issue or subject, and you have 3 or 4 ebooks on that issue. You may simply take ideas from all these ebooks and produce your own. You don’t copy but instead, learn from them and make a product of your own that lets in your own ideas, analysis, and data.This is just one example of a digital product you can create. This audiobook will teach you how you can create different digital products you can make money from. If writing is not your forte, you will also learn how you can outsource this task and pay someone to write for you. You will learn all that and more!This audiobook will discuss the following topics:The Most Important Thing When Writing An EbookHow To Craft The Best Topic For Your Product To Catch The Attention Of BuyersDrafting Out Your Table Of ContentsWriting It Yourself versus OutsourcingHow To OutsourceDealing With People You Hire To Create Your ProductDeveloping A Long Term Working Relationship With The PeopleAnd many more!Remember you have to do some research when it comes to creating products, outsourcing work, and getting and maintaining happy and loyal employees and business partners as well as customers. To learn more, scroll up and click “add to cart” now!

Show book

Malaria - Poverty Race and...

Margaret Humphreys

From a prominent medical historian, “a fascinating story of the spread of malaria through the USA following its introduction in the seventeenth century” (Nature Medicine). 
 
Margaret Humphreys presents the first book-length account of the parasitic, insect-borne disease that has infected millions and influenced settlement patterns, economic development, and the quality of life at every level of American society, especially in the south and during its peak in the nineteenth century. 
 
Humphreys approaches malaria from three perspectives: the parasite’s biological history, the medical response to it, and the patient’s experience of the disease. It addresses numerous questions including how the parasite thrives and eventually becomes vulnerable, how professionals came to know about the parasite and learned how to fight it, and how people view the disease and came to the point where they could understand and support the struggle against it. 
 
In addition Malaria: Poverty, Race, and Public Health in the United States argues that malaria control was central to the evolution of local and federal intervention in public health, and demonstrates the complex interaction between poverty, race, and geography in determining the fate of malaria. 
 
“A masterpiece . . . recommended reading for anyone involved in or interested in health care.”?Southern Medical Journal 
 
“The lack of jargon makes the book accessible to a wide audience.”?Journal of the History of Medicine

Show book

The Coming Singularity

Gary A. Freitas

As we approach 2050, it is projected that human consciousness will encounter a superior intelligence for the very first time: artificial machine intelligence. It is important for us to understand the evolutionary impact of this event, but also that we are being altered from the inside out for the singularity to arise. 
Are we ready? 
Will we be adaptive? 
How will we change? 
The Coming Singularity explores the psychological impact of the changes coming our way and the many adaptations we will have to make. 
We are transitioning to a world of one degree of separation, with only the illusion of privacy, autonomy and anonymity. All of us are undergoing a transition to an electronic identity, one that can reach back and change the real you. The question going forward will be, who is the real you? 
A cluster of psychological symptoms are evolving from our technology interface––Identity Diffusion. Its key feature is the de-realization of life. 
Direct brain-to-technology interfaces will soon render our brains an open-source forum. We need to discuss who is in there and why! 
The impact of e-technology on human identity will be profound, but it is also a prerequisite for machine intelligence to arise. We need to discuss this. 
We humans reside in complex, dynamical networks. The goal of artificial intelligence will be to evolve and stabilize these networks. And we may not be the priority.

Show book

Operation Ugly Truth - A Nurse's...

Patrice M Foster

Have you ever stopped to wonder how life has been for the people who have been on the frontline of fighting Covid-19 – their experiences, how they are treated, how they are able to cope with the extreme pressure, seeing death everywhere, and risking being infected all the time? 
And have you wondered why nurses would be threatening to strike and others even strike in the middle of the pandemic to get a full glimpse of what has really been going on but has gone unreported? 
If you’ve answered YES, keep reading...You Are About to Step into a Frontline Nurse’s World For A Moment, To Get A Glimpse Of Just How This Pandemic Has Been Brutal For The Frontline Nurses All Over The World! 
The pandemic has been brutal for nurses and other frontline workers. With nurses always dealing with Covid-19 cases every single day, seeing patients in thousands develop moderate to severe symptoms and others dying of Covid-19 related complications, you can agree with me that nurses have really seen the pandemic from a completely different perspective compared to everyone else. 
And this perspective hasn’t been one that anyone ‘outside’ could ever imagine. 
From extremely long working hours, the scare of getting infected with Covid-19 to the trauma of seeing disease, sickness, and death everywhere to mistreatment by company representatives to being not welcomed by locals, to someone on the outside, the details in this book will literally make you wonder whether what’s in this book is really true. 
Written by one of the many traveling nurses who has been to several states and seen it all, from New York to the Mexican border to Illinois and Texas, her account of her experiences in her line of duty will leave you with a new perspective about so many things about the pandemic.

Show book