Download or read book Principles of Electrolocation and Jamming Avoidance in Electric Fish written by W. Heiligenberg and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This booklet, together with the following two,-which are well under way and will succeed it at intervals of, we hope, no more than six months, sets the stage for a new editorial enterprise in the field of brain science. The accent is on the functional aspects of brains rather than on their develop ment, hence the title of the series. The central question being how neural activity is related to behavior, there will be, naturally, a wide scatter of sub jects, and Heiligenberg's monograph on electric fish may be considered typ ical of the expected standard deviation from the mean. Deviations in other directions may go as far as the sensory neuron, or brain theory, or aphasia, or farther. The next contributions planned for the series are: Precht, Neuronal Operations in the Vestibular System, and Movshon, Genes and Environment in the Development of the Visual Cortex. Our aim is to ap proach the central area by means of something like an evolving handbook of brain science. The individual monographs should describe promising and successful approaches, even in areas where the last word is far from being said. Besides originaI monographs and compounds of the author's own published papers, reviews are also we1come if they are more than the sum of the parts. The publisher promises speedy publication, and the editors will see that the manuscripts will be readable as well as interesting. Tübingen, Summer 1977 V.
Download or read book Principles of Electrolocation and Jamming Avoidance in Electric Fish written by Walter Heiligenberg and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Multimodal Torus in the Weakly Electric Fish Eigenmannia written by Henning Scheich and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since the behavioral work of Lissrnann (1958), who showed that the weak electric discharges of some families of fish (hitherto considered useless for prey capture or for scaring away enemies) are part of a strange sensory system, these fish have attracted attention from biologists. The subsequent discovery of the electroreceptors in the skin of gymnotids and mormyrids (Bullock et al. 1961; Fessard and Szabo 1961) and the evidence that the ampullae of Lorenzini of nonelectric sharks and rays are also electro receptors (Digkgraaf and Kalmijn 1962) was a start for a lively branch of physiological, anatomical, and behavioral research. Many fmdings of general importance for these fields have made the case to which extremes the performance of the central and peri pheral nervous systems can be driven. Among those fmdings is the temporal accuracy of the pacemaker of some high-frequency fish which controls the electric organ, pro bably the most accurate biological clock (coefficient of variation
Download or read book Electroreception written by Theodore Holmes Bullock and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-09-28 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Electroreception has become one of the most revealing areas in the study of the neural basis of behavior, and neurobiologists recognize it as a model sensory system for experimental study. Through studies of electroreception, researchers have gained extensive knowledge about a complete sensory system, from molecular biology to computation, communication, and behavior. The book Electroreception will examine the behavior, structure, and function of the electrosensory systems of fish and other vertebrates. As a comprehensive volume on the subject, the book will serve as both an introduction to the study of electroreception and a reference and review volume for researchers in related fields.
Download or read book Electrocommunication in Teleost Fishes written by Bernd Kramer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some fishes test their environment by generating electric fields outside their bodies (man's first contact with electricity). To send and receive electric signals, one's own or those from a neighbor, is the basis of some bony fishes' unusual sensory capacities that enable them to lead a secret, nocturnal life. This volume provides the reader with a detailed account of these fishes' biology and behavior and their sophisticated sensory capacities. The phylogenetic relationships of the fish taxa involved are discussed as well as the physiology and anatomy of the electrosensory-motor-system and the integration to form an efficient intelligence system. The main emphasis is on the descriptive and experimental analysis of electric communication behavior in a variety of species, including studies of digital signal synthesis. Whenever possible, mechanisms of communication are indicated.
Download or read book On the Texture of Brains written by Valentin Braitenberg and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-22 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I believe that the most intriguing thing in the world, be sides the world itself, is the human brain. Moreover, I am sure that a coherent natural philosophy will only be possible once we have understood how the brain, itself an object of physics, generates the description of the physical word. Therefore a book on the brain, be it the fly's or the mouse's brain, needs no justification. It is important, however, to point out the limits of its ambi tions. The first three Chapters are introductory and are written in a lighthearted philosophical vein. An idea is introduced that turns up repeatedly in the rest of the book, namely, that the structure of brains is information about the world. Chapter 4 is didactic: in it the neuron and its function are sketched as the element of the nerv ous tissue. Chapters 5 to 8 are a collection of essays loosely tied together mainly by the vagaries of my own interests. They do not intend to be definitive statements about the cerebellum, the cerebral cortex, or the visual ganglia of insects but rather illuminate these structures from a personal point of view. Accordingly, many au thors will find their own contributions only insufficiently represented in the text and frequently without explicit quotation. I beg their pardon and remind the reader that enough competent reviews are available in the fields that I touch upon, easily accessible through the references.
Download or read book Neuronal Coding of Perceptual Systems written by Werner Backhaus and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2001 with total page 663 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neuronal coding of information coming from external and internal environments and transducted by sensory receptors constitutes a basic biophysical problem. After the coding phase, such information orients organism responses, shaping complex behavioural patterns. The characteristics of both neurons (interneurons with re-entering connections, latency times, filter bandwidth with respect to input signals, logic operations on multiple convergent signals) and neuron nets (reverberating nets, feedback/feed-forward connections, oscillations due to endogenous activity patterns) are important for coding mechanisms. Neuronal coding is implied also in the higher phases of information processing linked to consciousness, when neuronal activity patterns are related to perceptual mental representations.
Download or read book Hearing and Sound Communication in Fishes written by W.N. Tavolga and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a compilation of the papers presented at a meeting that took place in April 1980 at the Mote Marine Laboratory, Sarasota, Florida. The meeting and this volume are outgrowths of two earlier international meetings on marine bio-acoustics that occurred in 1963 and 1966 (Tavolga 1964, 1967). The first meeting took place at the Lerner Marine Laboratory of the American Museum of Natural History, while the second meeting was at the American Museum itself, and was under the sponsorship of the Department of Animal Behavior. It is apparent that these two volumes have had immense impact on the current study of marine bio-acoustics, and particularly on fish audition. In a preliminary conference in Sarasota in 1979 we decided that it was time for another such meeting, to bring together as many as possible of the investigators interested in fish acoustics in order to assess the current state of our knowledge and predict directions for research for the next several years. Such a meeting appeared par ticularly timely, since over the past four or five years there have been many new studies that have provided new empirical and theoretical work on basic mechanisms of fish audition. Furthermore, it became evident, as we made up preliminary lists of possible participants, that few of the currently active workers were in the field back in 1966. In fact, of the current participants, only Drs.
Download or read book Neural Nets in Electric Fish written by Walter Heiligenberg and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1991-10-24 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heiligenberg's pioneering research describes the behavior of one species, the jamming avoidance response in the electric fish Eigenmannia, providing a rich mine of data that documents the first vertebrate example of the workings of the entire behavioral system from sensory input to motor output. Neural Nets in Electric Fish presents the principles and detailed results that have emerged from this exciting program. Heiligenberg's introduction familiarizes the reader with the unusual sensory modality electroreception, demonstrating the rationale and the motive behind the research. The text, which includes many helpful new pedagogical graphs, takes up the behavioral work done in the early 1980s, from explorations of peripheral receptors, the hindbrain, the midbrain, and finally diencephalon, to the most recent studies of motor output. Neural Nets in Electric Fish clearly describes Heiligenberg's analysis of the complex nature of the electrical stimulus delivered to Eigenmannia during jamming avoidance, and explains the novel two-parameter notation he uses to represent the different stages in information processing, giving many examples of the notation's power. The book relates all known behavioral phenomena of the jamming avoidance response to specific properties of the underlying neural network organization and draws interesting parallels between the electric sense and other sensory processing systems, such as the barn owl's sound localization system, motion detection systems in vision, and bat echolocation.
Download or read book Sensory Biology of Aquatic Animals written by Jelle 1987 and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 956 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume constitutes a series of invited chapters based on presentations given at an International Conference on the Sensory Biology of Aquatic Animals held June 24-28, 1985 at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida. The immediate purpose of the conference was to spark an exchange of ideas, concepts, and techniques among investigators concerned with the different sensory modalities employed by a wide variety of animal species in extracting information from the aquatic environment. By necessity, most investigators of sensory biology are specialists in one sensory system: different stimulus modalities require different methods of stimulus control and, generally, different animal models. Yet, it is clear that all sensory systems have principles in common, such as stimulus filtering by peripheral structures, tuning of receptor cells, signal-to-noise ratios, adaption and disadaptation, and effective dynamic range. Other features, such as hormonal and efferent neural control, circadian reorganization, and receptor recycling are known in some and not in other senses. The conference afforded an increased awareness of new discoveries in other sensory systems that has effectively inspired a fresh look by the various participants at their own area of specialization to see whether or not similar principles apply. This inspiration was found not only in theoretical issues, but equally in techniques and methods of approach. The myopy of sensory specialization was broken in one unexpected way by showing limitations of individual sense organs and their integration within each organism. For instance, studying vision, one generally chooses a visual animal as a model.
Download or read book Local Cortical Circuits written by Moshe Abeles and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neurophysiologists are often accused by colleagues in the physical sci ences of designing experiments without any underlying hypothesis. This impression is attributable to the ease of getting lost in the ever-increasing sea of professional publications which do not state explicitly the ultimate goal of the research. On the other hand, many of the explicit models for brain function in the past were so far removed from experimental reality that they had very little impact on further research. It seems that one needs much intimate experience with the real nerv-. ous system before a reasonable model can be suggested. It would have been impossible for Copernicus to suggest his model of the solar system without the detailed observations and tabulations of star and planet motion accu mulated by the preceeding generations. This need for intimate experience with the nervous system before daring to put forward some hypothesis about its mechanism of action is especially apparent when theorizing about cerebral cortex function. There is widespread agreement that processing of information in the cor tex is associated with complex spatio-temporal patterns of activity. Yet the vast majority of experimental work is based on single neuron recordings or on recordings made with gross electrodes to which tens of thousands of neurons contribute in an unknown fashion. Although these experiments have taught us a great deal about the organization and function of the cor tex, they have not enabled us to examine the spatio-temporal organization of neuronal activity in any detail.
Download or read book The Brain of the Common Marmoset Callithrix jacchus written by H. Stephan and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Oculomotor System of the Rabbit and Its Plasticity written by H. Collewijn and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The invitation to contribute a volume to the series Studies in Brain Func tion offers me a welcome opportunity for a comprehensive presentation of my research on the eye movements of the rabbit, and for a review of the older results in the perspectives offered by the progress of my own work, but even more of the field in general. Characteristically this monograph em phasizes the views of the author, which may not always be generally accept ed. Although connections with the work by other investigators are discussed as much as possible, I have not attempted to be complete in reviewing all publications related to oculomotor function in the rabbit. While presenting an overview of current understanding of a system, it is always wise to trace the historical roots of our knowledge and concepts. On the one hand, we may find that many established concepts derive their strength more from convention and convenience than from rigorous evi dence. Such traditional ideas should be challenged by critical experiments, using the best available techniques. On the other hand, some of the older publications remain a source of inspiration, because they contain valid ideas which generate fruitful experiments even today. A remarkable example of this category is Ter Braak's work on optokinetic nystagmus, published in 1936.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Neuroscience Volume 1 written by Larry R. Squire and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2009-06-12 with total page 12505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of the Neuroscience explores all areas of the discipline in its focused entries on a wide variety of topics in neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry and other related areas of neuroscience. Each article is written by an expert in that specific domain and peer reviewed by the advisory board before acceptance into the encyclopedia. Each article contains a glossary, introduction, a reference section, and cross-references to other related encyclopedia articles. Written at a level suitable for university undergraduates, the breadth and depth of coverage will appeal beyond undergraduates to professionals and academics in related fields.
Download or read book Localization and Orientation in Biology and Engineering written by D. Varju and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The German Society of Cybernetics organizes international conferences on selected interdisciplinary topics in regular 3-year intervals. The aim of these meetings is to bring together scientists who work in quite different disciplines, but are confronted with related problems and use the same or similar approaches. The topic of the 1983 conference which was held on March 23-25 at the University of Tiibingen came from a typical field of research in which engineers, biologists, and phYSicists share a common interest. We do not want to discuss here in detail the common principles which are used by nature and by engineers to solve the problems associated with localization and orientation, since the reader will find enough examples in this volume. The question, however, whether the participants of such meetings can really profit from each other, deserves some further consid eration. First, there is the difficulty of finding a common language. This still seems to be a problem, although in some fields the language of engineers and biologists has become very similar over the years, an impression we also gained during the conference. Most of the authors made a great ef fort to use a vocabulary which is understandable to people outside their own field of research, but, admittedly, not all succeeded.
Download or read book How do Brains Work written by BULLOCK and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 1364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I'll bet it will tum out that brains use both mechanisms, in different centers. " Much of my waking life and that of many of my friends is spent racking our brains over how brains work. This book claims that good science is often a form of betting on the outcome of research-the stakes being time and reputation and someone's money. Some scientists, to be sure, claim they avoid leaning this way or that, in the name of keeping an open mind. I recommend making expectations explicit in order to design controls against unconscious influence, formulate alternative outcomes more clearly-and to add zest. Both the immediately upcoming experiment and the expected result of many long years of work by many people after one is gone are proper subjects for betting or the most informed and serious guessing. The working title for this collection of new and old papers was for some time "Betting on how brains work" and then "Betting on brains. " It goes without saying that the book will not answer the title question but will speak to it, in particular making a series of propositions that I think are more likely to be confirmed by future research than the alternatives we can presently recognize. It follows that a significant message, implied in many chapters of the book is this.
Download or read book Advances in the Study of Behavior written by and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2002-01-21 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of Advances in the Study of Behavior remains as it has been since the series began: to serve the increasing number of scientists who are engaged in the study of animal behavior by presenting their theoretical ideas and research to their colleagues and to those in neighboring fields. We hope that the series will continue its "contribution to the development of the field", as its intended role was phrased in the Preface to the first volume in 1965. Since that time, traditional areas of animal behavior have achieved new vigor by the links they have formed with related fields and by the closer relationship that now exists between those studying animal and human subjects.Advances in the Study of Behavior, Volume 31 continues to serve scientists across a wide spectrum of disciplines. Focusing on new theories and research developments with respect to behavioral ecology, evolutionary biology, and comparative psychology, these volumes foster cooperation and communications in these dense fields.
