Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268

I have developed "tennis elbow" from lugging this book around the past four weeks, but it is worth the pain, the effort, and the aspirin. It is also worth the (relatively speaking) bargain price. Including appendixes, this book contains 894 pages of text. The entire panorama of the neural sciences is surveyed and examined, and it is comprehensive in its scope, from genomes to social behaviors. The editors explicitly state that the book is designed as "an introductory text for students of biology, behavior, and medicine," but it is hard to imagine any audience, interested in any fragment of neuroscience at any level of sophistication, that would not enjoy this book. The editors have done a masterful job of weaving together the biologic, the behavioral, and the clinical sciences into a single tapestry in which everyone from the molecular biologist to the practicing psychiatrist can find and appreciate his or

Principles of Neural Science

Brain-computer interfaces for communication and control.

The emergence of a unified cognitive moment relies on the coordination of scattered mosaics of functionally specialized brain regions. Here we review the mechanisms of large-scale integration that counterbalance the distributed anatomical and functional organization of brain activity to enable the emergence of coherent behaviour and cognition. Although the mechanisms involved in large-scale integration are still largely unknown, we argue that the most plausible candidate is the formation of dynamic links mediated by synchrony over multiple frequency bands.

The brainweb: phase synchronization and large-scale integration.

Prelude. Cycle 1. Introduction. Cycle 2. Structure defines function. Cycle 3. Diversity of cortical functions is provided by inhibition. Cycle 4. Windows on the brain. Cycle 5. A system of rhythms: from simple to complex dynamics. Cycle 6. Synchronization by oscillation. Cycle 7. The brain's default state: self-organized oscillations in rest and sleep. Cycle 8. Perturbation of the default patterns by experience. Cycle 9. The gamma buzz: gluing by oscillations in the waking brain. Cycle 10. Perceptions and actions are brain state-dependent. Cycle 11. Oscillations in the "other cortex:" navigation in real and memory space. Cycle 12. Coupling of systems by oscillations. Cycle 13. The tough problem. References.

Rhythms of the brain

Neocortical mechanisms in motor learning.

Improved detection of event-related functional MRI signals using probability functions.

The issue of whether brain signals in the absence of peripheral feedback are sufficient to specify accurate movement was evaluated by studying motor performance in patients with loss of somesthetic afferent input as a result of acquired large-fiber sensory neuropathy. With visual guidance, movements and postures were impaired relatively little, but when visual guidance was unavailable, the patients exhibited postural drift and gross inaccuracy of movement. Impairments were more apparent for smaller (3 degrees) than for larger (15 degrees) movements. Previous studies that have failed to show major motor impairments in deafferented subjects examined movements involving rather large joint displacements, and this may have been a factor in the failure of these studies to reveal severe deficits. The present results demonstrate a critical role for somesthetic feedback in regulating centrally generated levels of motor output and show that central motor programs deprived of such feedback are unable to subserve accurate motor control.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/81/3/979.full.pdf

Motor deficits in patients with large-fiber sensory neuropathy

Static and dynamic organization of motor cortex.

The cutaneous eyeblink has 2 electromyographic components, 1 unilateral and early (R1) and 1 bilateral and late (R2), which are served by different neural pathways. These 2 reactions were measured when the eliciting stimulus was expected or relatively surprising. Forewarning was varied in 3 ways: Subjects received notice that the stimulus was about to occur on some trials (Experiment 1); delivered the stimulus to themselves on some trials (Experiments 2 & 3); or experienced a series of trials in which a tone was paired with the eliciting stimulus, followed by tone-alone trials interspersed with test trials (Experiment 4). In each case, forewarning enhanced R1 amplitudes while depressing R2 but reduced the latency of both components. This mixed pattern of effects reveals that the preparatory state provoked by forewarning focuses excitatory and inhibitory processes simultaneously on different reflex pathways: inhibition central and excitation peripheral.

Jerome N. Sanes

Papers

Neocortical mechanisms in motor learning.

Improved detection of event-related functional MRI signals using probability functions.

Motor deficits in patients with large-fiber sensory neuropathy

Static and dynamic organization of motor cortex.

Facilitation and inhibition of the human startle blink reflexes by stimulus anticipation.