The complexity of the brain and the protean nature of behavior remain the most elusive area of science, but also the most important. van Hemmen and Sejnowski invited 23 experts from the many areas--from evolution to qualia--of systems neuroscience to formulate one problem each. Although each chapter was written independently and can be read separately, together they provide a useful roadmap to the field of systems neuroscience and will serve as a source of inspirations for future explorers of the brain.

PrefaceJ. Leo van Hemmen and Terrence J. Sejnowski Section 1. How have brains evolved? 1. Shall we ever understand the fly's brain?, Gilles Laurent 2. Can we understand the action of brain in natural environments?, Hermann Wagner and Bernhard Gaese 3. Hemisphere dominance of brain function-which functions are lateralized and why?, Gunther Ehr Section 2. How is the cerebral cortex organized? 4. What is the function of the thalamus?, S. Murray Sherman 5. What is a neuronal map, how does it arise, and what is it good for?, J. Leo van Hemmen 6. What is the role of top-down connections?, Jean Bullier Section 3. How do neurons interact? 7. How fast is neuronal signal transmission?, Wulfram Gerstner 8. What is the origin and functional properties of irregular activity?, Dr. Carl van Vreeswi 9. Are single cortical neurons independent or are they obedient members of a huge orchestra?, Amiram Grinvald, Tal Kenet, Amos Arieli, and Misha Tsodyks 10. What is the other 85% of V1 doing?, Bruno A. Olshausen and David J. Field Section 4. What can brains compute? 11. What is the formal computation in early vision?, Steven W. Zuck 12. Are neurons adapted for specific computations?, Catherine Carr, D. Soares, S. Parameshwaran, S. Kalluri, J. Simon, and T. Perney 13. How can neural systems compute in the time domain, Andreas V.M. Herz 14. How common are neural codes?, David McAlpine and Alan R. Palmer 15. How does the hearing system perform auditory scene analysis?, Georg Klump 16. How does our visual system achieve shift and size invariance?, Laurenz Wiskott Section 5. 17. What is reflected in sensory neocortical activity: External stimuli or what the cortex does with them?, Henning Scheich, Frank W. Ohl, Holger Schulze, Andreas Hess, and Andre Brechmann 18. To what extent does perception depend upon action?, Giacomo Rizzolatti and Vittorio Gallese 19. What are the projective fields of cortical neurons?, Terrence J. Sejnowski 20. To what extent is the brain reconfigurable?, John Reynolds 21. Where are the switches on this thing?, Laurence Abbott 22. Do qualia, metaphor, language, and abstract thought emerge from synesthesia, V.S. Ramachandran and Edward M. Hubbard 23. What are the neural correlates of consciousness?, Francis Crick and Christof Koch

"Neuroscience has a rather briefer history than mathematics, but Leo van Hemmen and Terry Sejnowski felt that it was nonetheless mature enough for them to organize a meeting on Problems in Neuroscience a century after Hilberts address. This printed version of their meeting, 23 Problems in Systems Neuroscience, has taken six years to arrive, but it is not too late and certainly not too little. In the place of one Hilbert are 40 problem-posers who have collectively contributed the 23 chapters, grouped into sections that sum up 5 current concerns: How have brains evolved? How is cerebral cortex organized? How do neurons interact? What can brains compute? How are cognitive systems organized? With such an attractive list of topics, this book is sure to find a wide audience at every level of interest, from lay readers to students and academics."--Kevan A.C. Martin, Nature |k No