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Nov 2000
ISBN 0262072114
464 pp.
218 illus.
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Gateway to Memory
Mark A. Gluck and Catherine E. Myers

"Gateway to Memory is an exciting and badly needed text that integrates computational and neurobiological approaches to memory. Authoritative and clearly written, this book will be valuable for students and researchers alike."
-- Daniel L. Schacter, Professor and Chair of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of Searching for Memory

This book is for students and researchers who have a specific interest in learning and memory and want to understand how computational models can be integrated into experimental research on the hippocampus and learning. It emphasizes the function of brain structures as they give rise to behavior, rather than the molecular or neuronal details. It also emphasizes the process of modeling, rather than the mathematical details of the models themselves.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part provides a tutorial introduction to topics in neuroscience, the psychology of learning and memory, and the theory of neural network models. The second part, the core of the book, reviews computational models of how the hippocampus cooperates with other brain structures -- including the entorhinal cortex, basal forebrain, cerebellum, and primary sensory and motor cortices -- to support learning and memory in both animals and humans. The book assumes no prior knowledge of computational modeling or mathematics. For those who wish to delve more deeply into the formal details of the models, there are optional "mathboxes" and appendices. The book also includes extensive references and suggestions for further readings.

More endorsements:

"This book is a very user-friendly introduction to the world of computer models of the brain, with an emphasis on how the hippocampus and associated areas mediate memory. The authors take the time to explain in detail the rationale for making models of the brain, and then use their own work, as well as related neurobiological and computational research, to illustrate the emerging successes of this approach to understanding brain function."
-- Howard Eichenbaum, Laboratory of Cognitive Neurobiology, University Professor and Professor of Psychology, Boston University

"If you purchase only one book at the turn of the new millenium to teach you about the latest computational models of memory and amnesia, let it be Gateway to Memory. Gluck and Myers display their extraordinary ability to simplify difficult concepts so that a broad readership can appreciate the breadth and depth of the rapid advances in the cognitive neuroscience of memory being made by the best and brightest of computational modelers."
-- Jordan Grafman, Ph.D., Chief, Cognitive Neuroscience Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

"Gateway to Memory is a valuable addition to the introductory texts describing neural network models of learning and memory. The early chapters present abstract models of brain and learning in an intuitively appealing style that is accessible to lay readers as well as advanced students of network modeling. Later chapters, relevant to experts as well as novices, advance cutting-edge ideas and models that are tested closely by experimental results on learning. A particular virtue is the close interchange the authors maintain throughout between predictions of competing models and experimental results from animal and human learning."
-- Gordon H. Bower, Department of Psychology, Stanford University

"This delectable book lays out Gluck and Meyers' comprehensive theory of hippocampal function in easily digestible steps. Readers without a computational modeling background will find it accessible and intriguing. Practicing modelers will be inspired."
-- David S. Touretzky, Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Carnegie Mellon University

Table of Contents
 Preface
 Acknowledgments
I Fundamentals
1 Introduction
2 The Hippocampus in Learning and Memory
3 Association in Neural Networks
4 Representation and Generalization in Neural Networks
5 Unsupervised Learning: Autoassociative Networks and the Hippocampus
II Modeling Memory
6 Cortico-Hippocampal Interaction in Associative Learning
7 Cortico-Hippocampal Interaction and Contextual Processing
8 Stimulus Representation in Cortex
9 Entorhinal Cortex
10 Cholinergic Modulation of Hippocampal-Region Function
11 Emergent Themes
 Glossary
 Notes
 References
 Author Index
 Subject Index
 
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Related Topics
Computational Intelligence
Neuroscience
Psychology, Cognitive Science


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