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The book explains how to understand cognition in terms of brain
anatomy, physiology and chemistry, using an approach adapted from
techniques for understanding complex electronic systems. These
techniques create hierarchies of information process based
descriptions on different levels of detail, where higher levels
contain less information and can therefore describe complete
cognitive phenomena, but are more approximate. The nature of the
approximations are well understood, and more approximate higher
level descriptions can therefore be mapped to more precise detailed
descriptions of any part of a phenomenon as required. Cognitive
phenomena, the anatomy and connectivity of major brain structures,
neuron physiology, and cellular chemistry are reviewed. Various
cognitive tasks are described in terms of information processes
performed by different major anatomical structures. These higher
level descriptions are selectively mapped to more detailed
physiological and chemical levels.
The book explains how to understand cognition in terms of brain
anatomy, physiology and chemistry, using an approach adapted from
techniques for understanding complex electronic systems. These
techniques create hierarchies of information process based
descriptions on different levels of detail, where higher levels
contain less information and can therefore describe complete
cognitive phenomena, but are more approximate. The nature of the
approximations are well understood, and more approximate higher
level descriptions can therefore be mapped to more precise detailed
descriptions of any part of a phenomenon as required. Cognitive
phenomena, the anatomy and connectivity of major brain structures,
neuron physiology, and cellular chemistry are reviewed. Various
cognitive tasks are described in terms of information processes
performed by different major anatomical structures. These higher
level descriptions are selectively mapped to more detailed
physiological and chemical levels.
This book is the integrated presentation of a large body of work on
understanding the operation of biological brains as systems. The
work has been carried out by the author over the last 22 years, and
leads to a claim that it is relatively straightforward to
understand how human cognition results from and is supported by
physiological processes in the brain. This claim has roots in the
technology for designing and manufacturing electronic systems which
manage extremely complex telecommunications networks with high
reliability, in real time and with no human intervention. Such
systems perform very large numbers of interacting control features.
Although there is little direct resemblance between such systems
and biological brains, the ways in which these practical
considerations force system architectures within some specific
bounds leads to an understanding of how different but analogous
practical considerations constrain the architectures of brains
within different bounds called the Recommendation Architecture.
These architectural bounds make it possible to relate cognitive
phenomena to physiological processes.
This book is the integrated presentation of a large body of work on
understanding the operation of biological brains as systems. The
work has been carried out by the author over the last 22 years, and
leads to a claim that it is relatively straightforward to
understand how human cognition results from and is supported by
physiological processes in the brain. This claim has roots in the
technology for designing and manufacturing electronic systems which
manage extremely complex telecommunications networks with high
reliability, in real time and with no human intervention. Such
systems perform very large numbers of interacting control features.
Although there is little direct resemblance between such systems
and biological brains, the ways in which these practical
considerations force system architectures within some specific
bounds leads to an understanding of how different but analogous
practical considerations constrain the architectures of brains
within different bounds called the Recommendation Architecture.
These architectural bounds make it possible to relate cognitive
phenomena to physiological processes.
In a significant contribution to the study of the brain and
behavior, Coward develops a system model for the human brain based
on a new physiologically based theory of learning and memory. The
work is primarily intended for neuropsychologists, but will be of
interest to anyone concerned with understanding the brain as a
functioning system. The author has twenty years' experience in most
of the different aspects of designing complex electronic systems.
Such a system today has up to several billion hardware components
such as individual transistors, and millions of lines of software.
Coward argues that the methodology used to handle the design of
such systems can be modified and adapted to understand the brain.
In the design of electronic systems, the concept instruction makes
it possible to rigorously translate from high level operational
descriptions to detailed descriptions in terms of machine code and
transistor structures. In the brain, the concept pattern can make
it possible to translate between the descriptions of psychology and
physiology and make functional understanding possible. Any change
in the state of a neuron can be interpreted on a system level as
the recognition of a pattern. Pattern is precisely defined and
includes both objects and changes to objects. Based on these
observations, Coward designs a model called the cascaded pattern
extraction hierarchy to explain the functioning of the brain,
showing that the brain can be visualized as a pattern extraction
template, in which successive layers are able to extract
increasingly complex patterns from relatively simple input.
Coward demonstrates that as a pattern extraction template, the
brain forms a hierarchy in connectivity space. Early layers--those
closest to sensory input--can be interpreted as extracting patterns
from simple sensory input. Later layers generate action
recommendations, and later still, they select actions, all within
the same pattern extraction paradigm. According to the model, the
firing of a neuron at these points constitutes both pattern
recognition and action recommendation. Coward's system model not
only provides a framework for understanding and predicting
psychological phenomena, including the functioning of personality,
but also accounts for such apparent anomalies as the difference
between short and long term memory and the fact that localized
brain damage does not remove the memory of individual events.
Widely useful for studies of brain and behavior, Pattern Thinking
also suggests how to identify promising areas to investigate in the
treatment of psychological illnesses.
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