Dynamic Coordination in the Brain: From Neurons to Mind

Front Cover
Christoph von der Malsburg, William A. Phillips, Wolf Singer
MIT Press, 2010 - Medical - 352 pages

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

 

Contents

1 Dynamic Coordination in Brain and Mind
1
2 Cortical Circuits
25
3 Sequence Coding and Learning
35
4 What Can Studies of Comparative Cognition Teach Us about the Evolution of Dynamic Coordination?
43
5 Evolution of Dynamic Coordination
59
6 Modeling Coordination in the Neocortex at the Microcircuitand Global Network Level
83
7 Oscillationsupported Information Processingand Transfer at the HippocampusEntorhinalNeocortical Interface
101
8 What Are the Local Circuit Design Features Concerned with Coordinating Rhythms?
115
12 Stimulusdriven Coordination of Cortical Cell Assemblies and Propagation of Gestalt Belief in V1
169
13 Coordination in Brain Systems
193
14 Hot Spots and Dynamic Coordination in Gestalt Perception
215
15 Coordination in Sensory Integration
229
16 Neural Coordination and Human Cognition
235
17 Failures of Dynamic Coordination in Disease States and Their Implications for Normal Brain Function
245
18 Coordination in Behavior and Cognition
267
Bibliography
301

9 Coordination in Circuits
133
10 Coordination
149
11 Neocortical Rhythms
159

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About the author (2010)

Christoph von der Malsburg is Professor and Senior Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS). William A. Phillips is Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Stirling and Adjunct Fellow of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. Wolf Singer is Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and Founding Director of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies and the Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience in cooperation with the Max Planck Society, where he is also Senior Research Fellow. He is the coauthor of Beyond the Self: Conversations between Buddhism and Neuroscience (MIT Press).