Description
Is there a right way to study how the brain works? Following the empiricist's tradition, the most common approach involves the study of neural reactions to stimuli presented by an experimenter. This 'outside-in' method fueled a generation of brain research and now must confront hidden assumptions about causation and concepts that may not hold neatly for systems that act and react.György Buzsáki's The Brain from Inside Out examines why the outside-in framework for understanding brain function have become stagnant and points to new directions for understanding neural function. Building upon the success of Rhythms of the Brain, Professor Buzsáki presents the brain as a foretelling device that interacts with its environment through action and the examination of action's consequence. Consider that our brains are initially filled with nonsense patterns, all of which are gibberish until grounded by action-based interactions. By matching these nonsense "words" to the outcomes of action, they acquire meaning. Once its circuits are "calibrated" by action and experience, the brain can disengage from its sensors and actuators, and examine "what happens if" scenarios by peeking into its own computation, a process that we refer to as cognition.The Brain from Inside Out explains why our brain is not an information-absorbing coding device, as it is often portrayed, but a venture-seeking explorer constantly controlling the body to test hypotheses. Our brain does not process information: it creates it.
Table of Contents
PrefaceChapter 1: The ProblemChapter 2: Causation and Logic in NeuroscienceChapter 3: Perception from ActionChapter 4: Neuronal Assembly: The Fundamental Unit of CommunicationChapter 5: Internalization of Experience: Cognition from ActionChapter 6: Brain Rhythms Provide a Framework for Neural SyntaxChapter 7: Internally Organized Cell-Assembly TrajectoriesChapter 8: Internally Organized Activity During Off-Line Brain StatesChapter 9: Enhancing Brain Performance by Externalizing ThoughtChapter 10: Space and Time in the BrainChapter 11: Gain and AbstractionChapter 12: Everything is a Relationship: The Non-Egalitarian, Log-Scaled BrainChapter 13: The Brain's Best GuessChapter 14: EpilogueIndex
