How to Build a Brain: A Neural Architecture for Biological Cognition

by Chris Eliasmith

One goal of researchers in neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence is to build theoretical models that can explain the flexibility and adaptiveness of biological systems. How to Build a Brain provides a guided exploration of a new cognitive architecture that takes biological detail seriously while addressing cognitive phenomena. The Semantic Pointer Architecture (SPA) introduced in this book provides a set of tools for constructing a wide range of biologically constrained perceptual, cognitive, and motor models.

Examples of such models are provided to explain a wide range of data including single-cell recordings, neural population activity, reaction times, error rates, choice behavior, and fMRI signals. Each of the models addressed in the book introduces a major feature of biological cognition, including semantics, syntax, control, learning, and memory. These models are presented as integrated considerations of brain function, giving rise to what is currently the world's largest functional brain model.

The book also compares the Semantic Pointer Architecture with the current state of the art, addressing issues of theory construction in the behavioral sciences, semantic compositionality, and scalability, among other considerations. The book concludes with a discussion of conceptual challenges raised by this architecture, and identifies several outstanding challenges for SPA and other cognitive architectures.

Along the way, the book considers neural coding, concept representation, neural dynamics, working memory, neuroanatomy, reinforcement learning, and spike-timing dependent plasticity. Eight detailed, hands-on tutorials exploiting the free Nengo neural simulation environment are also included, providing practical experience with the concepts and models presented throughout.

Genres: Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, Science, Nonfiction, Brain, Computer Science, Psychology

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Cal Godot · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book kicks ass, but I'm not intelligent enough to convey anything more.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

interesting book. highly technical, so it's not really for the lay reader.

[Marius · Rating 2 out of 5]

Looks like the main purpose of this book is to make the author look knowledgeable, and to promote their Nengo project. Clearly the author knows a lot, but he doesn't have the skills to pass that to non-experts.

[Parsa]

Don’t be fooled by the intro, you need a pretty good foundation in control theory and linear algebra to get anything out of this. Still, the SPA is a pretty cool use of vector spaces even though I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around it.