The Brain from Inside Out

Preface
Chapter 1: The Problem
Chapter 2: Causation and Logic in Neuroscience
Chapter 3: Perception from Action
Chapter 4: Neuronal Assembly: The Fundamental Unit of Communication
Chapter 5: Internalization of Experience: Cognition from Action
Chapter 6: Brain Rhythms Provide a Framework for Neural Syntax
Chapter 7: Internally Organized Cell-Assembly Trajectories
Chapter 8: Internally Organized Activity During Off-Line Brain States
Chapter 9: Enhancing Brain Performance by Externalizing Thought
Chapter 10: Space and Time in the Brain
Chapter 11: Gain and Abstraction
Chapter 12: Everything is a Relationship: The Non-Egalitarian, Log-Scaled Brain
Chapter 13: The Brain's Best Guess
Chapter 14: Epilogue
Index

Is there a right way to study how the brain works? Following the empiricist's tradition, the most common approach involves the study of neural reactions to stimuli presented by an experimenter. This 'outside-in' method fueled a generation of brain research and now must confront hidden assumptions about causation and concepts that may not hold neatly for systems that act and react.

György Buzsáki's The Brain from Inside Out examines why the outside-in framework for understanding brain function have become stagnant and points to new directions for understanding neural function. Building upon the success of Rhythms of the Brain, Professor Buzsáki presents the brain as a foretelling device that interacts with its environment through action and the examination of action's consequence. Consider that our brains are initially filled with nonsense patterns, all of which are gibberish until grounded by action-based interactions. By matching these nonsense " by action and experience, the brain can disengage from its sensors and actuators, and examine.

The Brain from Inside Out explains why our brain is not an information-absorbing coding device, as it is often portrayed, but a venture-seeking explorer constantly controlling the body to test hypotheses. Our brain does not process information: it creates it.

• Alerts the neuroscience community and beyond why our existing research frameworks are currently stagnant and points to possible new directions for progress
• Offers the 'inside out' approach as an alternative strategy to the currently dominating 'outside in' method
• Discusses how one can start building brains from simple to the more complex using an an action driven, observer/classifier-based approach

Gyorgy Buzsaki, MD, PhD, Biggs Professor of Neural Sciences, New York University. Member of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Co-recipient of the 2011 Brain Prize. His main interest is <"neural syntax>", how segmentation of neural information is organized to support cognitive functions. Book: G. Buzsáki, Rhythms of the Brain, Oxford University Press, 2006