This book presents a unique synthesis of the current neuroscience of cognition by one of the world's authorities in the field. The guiding principle to this synthesis is the tenet that the entirety of our knowledge is encoded by relations, and thus by connections, in neuronal networks of our cerebral cortex. Cognitive networks develop by experience on a base of widely dispersed modular cell assemblies representing elementary sensations and movements. As they develop, cognitive networks organize themselves hierarchically by order of complexity or abstraction of their content. Because networks intersect profusely, sharing common nodes, a neuronal assembly anywhere in the cortex can be part of many networks, and therefore many items of knowledge. All cognitive functions consist of neural transactions within and between cognitive networks. After reviewing the neurobiology and architecture of cortical networks (also named cognits), the author undertakes a systematic study of cortical dynamics in each of the major cognitive functions- perception, memory, attention, language, and intelligence. In this study, he makes use of a large body of evidence from a variety of methodologies, in the brain of the human as well as the nonhuman primate. The outcome of the interdisciplinary enterprise is the emergence of structural and dynamic order in the cerebral cortex that, though still sketchy and fragmentary, mirrors with remarkable fidelity the order of the human mind. The audience for this book consists of cognitive neuroscientists, neurophysiologists, neurobiologists, neuroimaging experts, neurologists, neurosurgeons, psychiatrists, cognitive psychologists, and linguists. The book will also be of interest to students in all of these disciplines and could be used as text or as collateral reading in courses in systems neuroscience, behavioral neuroscience, cognitive science, network modeling, physiological psychology, and linguistics.

Review

For Fuster . . . the essential transactions underlying cognition involve the activation of different networks, arranged in hierarchies, that represent the building blocks of cognition. So, unlike Sherrington with his 'million-fold democracy' of neurons, Fuster proposes an isomorphism between the processes and the structures of mind and of the cerebral cortex . . . There is a strong argument that we have made such great progress in understanding the neural basis of cognition only because neurons, and the networks that they form, compute in an analogue style . . . It seems fantastic, but Fuster's progress report dares us to believe that the patterns woven by Sherrington's 'enchanted loom,' the cerebral cortex, are now well on the way to being understood. (Nature, Vol 423)

Brain Damage, Brain Repair is an excellent and authoritative source book on what, for most people, is the most important question about the nervous system - how to repair the damage inflicted by the ever more violent ways of peace and war and the depredations of age. (Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Vol 96)

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