This volume contains invited and contributed papers presented at the 12th edition of the International Summer School on Neural Networks "Eduardo R. Caianiello," co-organized by the RIKEN BSI (Japan) and the Department of Physics of the U- versity of Salerno (Italy). The 12th edition of the school was directed by Maria Marinaro (University of Salerno), Silvia Scarpetta (University of Salerno) and Yoko Yamaguchi (RIKEN BSI Japan) and hosted in the Ettore Majoranca Center in Erice in Italy. The contributions collected in this book are aimed at providing primarily high-level tutorial coverage of the fields related to neural dynamics, reporting recent experim- tal and theoretical results investigating the role of collective dynamics in hippocampal and parahippocampal regions and in the mammalian olfactory system. This book is devoted to graduate students and researchers with different scientific background (including physics, mathematics, biology, neuroscience, etc.) who wish to learn about brain science beyond the boundary of their fields. Each lecture aimed to include basic guidance in each field. Topics of lectures include the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex dynamics and mammalian olfactory system dynamics, memory and phase coding, mechanisms for spatial navigation and for episodic memory function, oscillations in neural assemblies, cortical up and down states, and related topics where frontier efforts in recent decades have been successfully linked to a remarkable evolution of the field. April 2008 M. Marinaro S. Scarpetta Y. Yamaguchi

This volume contains invited and contributed papers presented at the eighth edition of the International Summer School on Neural Networks, dedicated to Prof.EduardoR.Caianiello.Theschoolwasestablishedin1996byProf.Antonio Zichichi, director of the Ettore Maiorana Centre for Scienti?c Culture in Erice (Sicily), and Prof. Maria Marinaro, director of the International Institute for Advanced Scienti?c Studies in Vietri sul Mare, in Italy. The school is held each year,alternatingbetweenEriceandVietri,proposingsurveysonseveralresearch ?elds related to cybernetics studies and human-machine interaction. The eighth edition of the school was on cortical dynamics and was held in Erice. The contributions collected in this book are aimed at providing primarily high-level tutorial coverage of the ?elds related to cortical dynamics, repo- ing recent experimental and theoretical results investigating the processing, the transmission, and the imprinting of information in the brain, and important functions of the cortical area such as cortical rhythms, cortical neural plasticity, and their structural basis and functional signi?cance. Height surveys, reporting the most recent original results, are o?ered by specialists in the ? eld. Consequently, the volume may be used as a reference book on models of cortical dynamics from neuroscienceand physics. To this aim the volume is divided into two sections: fundamentals of cortical dynamics, and mathematical models of cortical dynamics.