UF BME Professor Mingzhou Ding has edited a newly published book, The Dynamic Brain, by Oxford Press. His co-editor is Dr. Dennis Glanzman, the Program Chief of the Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience Program at the National Institute of Mental Health. This carefully edited volume, with contributions from leading researchers around the world, is the first to fully attack the problem of variability in the brain’s activity as an indicator of its dynamic nature and not just as noise to be ignored. It will be of great value to a generation of researchers.

Description of the Book

Neuronal responses to identically presented stimuli are extremely variable and this variability has in the past often been regarded as “noise.” Recent observations have begun to change our view on this issue by revealing that “noise” actually contains meaningful information. To understand how neurons work in concert to bring about coherent behavior and how discord to the network leads to disease, neuroscientists now routinely record from hundreds of different neurons and many different brain areas. Applying advanced statistical methods to these recordings, in conjunction with computational modeling, they uncover the role of neuronal variability and noise in normal brain function and in neurological and psychiatric disorders. The Dynamic Brain is the first book to provide a cogent and timely review of this emerging field.

Key Features

• Addresses neuronal variability and noise using all signal recording modalities ranging from single unit spike trains to local field potentials to EEG/MEG to functional imaging
• Examines neuronal variability from theoretical, experimental, and clinical perspectives
• Considers mechanisms at the synaptic, cellular, and system levels

Advance Praise for The Dynamic Brain

Variability in the nervous system is much documented, but far less understood. This stimulating book brings together authors expert on topics such as how to characterize this variability, how noise affects neural dynamics, and what are the consequences of variability for cognitive function. These are important issues for appreciating the complexity of brain dynamics and its relationship to function.

Nancy Kopell, PhD, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Co-director, Center for BioDynamics, Boston University, Boston, MA

In this book, a number of world-class researchers come together to write about some very profound questions. Why are neuronal responses so variable? Given such variability, how do our brains build stable representations of the world? What roles does neuronal variability play in normal and abnormal human behavior? The resulting book is provocative and a good read.

John A. White, PhD, USTAR Professor of Bioengineering, Executive Director of the Brain Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT