Biophysical Neural Networks: Foundations of Integrative...

Reader Reviews
The contents dwell on the biophysical properties (e.g. dendritic structure, ionic channels, and synaptic transmission) of neural networks. The overall motivation is to show that biophysics of computation is an inconsistent paradigm when dealing with neural networks by showing that integration from microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic levels is feasible. Therefore this book laid the foundations of integrative neuroscience independent of silly metaphors. Chapters 1-2 constitute an introduction to the subject and a historical survey of neuronal modeling, respectively. Chapters 3-5 encompass the cellular level with an emphasis on nonsynaptic transmission, and computational models of single neurons from the retina and amygdala. Chapters 6-7 characterize the physico-chemical mechanisms underlying synaptic plasticity in biochemical networks and synaptic transmission in axonal networks. Chapters 8-10 form the hard core of basic theory of small-scale biophysical neural networks.Chapters 11-12 deal with mesoscopic theories of hippocampal neural networks. Chapter 15 serves as an advanced overview of the numerical methods in neural modeling of networks.A number of problems are included at the end of each chapter to give a more in-depth appraisal of the contents, and each chapter ends with some predictions in relation to future developments. A highly recommemded book!