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Principles of Neural Information Processing

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Principles of Neural Information Processing

Part of the book series: Cognitive Systems Monographs ((COSMOS,volume 27))

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Abstract

To analyse the working of the brain it is our intention here to develop a framework that encompasses its most important aspects in functional terms. This intention seems solvable only if one chooses a task that makes use of all parts of the brain, and keeps the level of the description and dimensionality of this task manageable. As a result, although the description should include the numerous details that we know, not every single one needs quantifying. Our view is that the organization of behavior is the task per se that has to be solved by brains. We have therefore chosen this task as the framework for explaining how the brain works, knowing that it has gaps which—so we hope—may be filled by realistic hypotheses. Our emphasis is on the development of principles and strategies. Since, in brains, their partial self-organization, the lifelong adaptation and their use of various methods of processing incoming information are all interconnected, we have chosen not only neurobiology and evolution theory as a basis for the elaboration of such a framework, but also systems and signal theory. The latter provides a well-tested system of concepts, and opens the way to physical laws and limits.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Ms. Dr. U. Körner for many discussions on the subject and with the help in gathering the relevant literature. Her broad knowledge in neurobiology has been of great help for the text and for our conscience as well. The like is true for Dr. M. Casimir who in addition emboldened us to publish. We also thank Dr. Scharstein for his scrupulous perusal of the german manuscript and the resulting improvements. From handwritten difficultly decipherable text fragments Ms. H. Berz compiled a perusable text (german at first). We thank for her patience and her work. The english version, first typed by Ms. A. Johnson-Letzel and Ms. R. Bertgen has got its final polish by Ms. Dr. J. Büttner-Ennever. All these people we are deeply indebted to and we thank them heartily.

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  1. Institute für Neuroinformatik, Ruhr Universität Bochum, Mainz, Germany

    Werner v. Seelen

  2. Zoologisches Institut Abteilung Neurobiologie, Universität Mainz, Bad Kreuznach, Germany

    Konstantin Behrend

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  1. Werner v. Seelen
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Correspondence to Werner v. Seelen .

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Seelen, W.v., Behrend, K. (2016). Principles of Neural Information Processing. In: Principles of Neural Information Processing. Cognitive Systems Monographs, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20113-9_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20113-9_1

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