Book Review: 'Neuroelectrodynamics: Understanding the Brain Language' D. Aur and M. S. Jog (2010)

摘要

In this book, Neuroelectrodynamics: Understanding the Brain Language, the authorsnimplicitly talk about a paradigm shift. They literally postulate that the centralntenets of computational neuroscience and neural computation are bluntly wrong. Onnp. 76 the authors state: “the current theories of neural computation fail to mimicnthe power of the brain, new concepts regarding computation need to be developed.”nThe authors use the Against Method which would seem to me to be an anarchisticnapproach to science given that no alternative mathematical models are presentednto support their view. However, the authors’ claim in the last chapter that thenbook is not meant to include detailed mathematical complexities as it is meant asnan introductory book to lay the groundwork for what the authors call the “NEDn(neuro-electro-dynamics) model ”. This contradicts the authors’ statement on p. 30:n“The fundamental postulates of this book are based upon providing a mathematicalnformulation and an experimental base to understand brain computation.” In a nutshell,nthe book is all about as stated on p. 79 “considering charges as basic elementsnof neural computation in the brain.” It discusses about the need for those who studynbrain computations to move forward based on the presence of how the dynamics ofncharged particles interact in three-dimensional neurons. The method is designatednas the “computational cube” paradigm allowing for the neurobiology of semanticsnto be developed through dynamics of charges “read” by neighboring neurons bothnsynaptically and extrasynaptically. This is expanded in detail in chapter four, whichnis the main chapter of the book. A representation of an image is decoded i.e., “read”nwhen a certain density of charges in a certain volume is evaluated through a repeatedncycle of coding and decoding. However, no clear algorithms are postulated on hownthis is actually accomplished. The authors talk about the neurobiology of semanticsnas changes in the emergent dynamics of electrical charges and their interactionsn351n352 Poznanskindependent on the structural topology of the neuronal systems. Well of course, thisnhas been posited by Walter Freeman and my own work on the integrative theory ofncognition, but unfortunately these works are not cited.