Rhythms of the Brain

Brilliant book. Some parts towards the middle and end are not easy to follow. Occasionally Buzsaki may have forgotten who his audience were! But I'd still highly recommend this book - for the first few chapters alone. Easily one of my favourite books.

This is an excellent book, very easy to read, written by one of the best researcher in the neuroscience field. Suggested to everyone.

A book accessible, and recommended, to everyone

For the lay reader, Buzsaki presents a new view of the brain that concentrates on oscillations generated within the brain. This moves us on from the normal texbook emphasis on neurons and synapses. The oscillations are related to processes of self-organisation, and the amplifying or dampening of feedback loops. The book explains the balance achieved between the excitatory function of the pyramidal cells and the neurotransmitter glutamate and the inhibitory function of the interneurons and the neurotransmitter GABA. Sleep and circadian rhythms are also discussed.The lack of much discussion of consciousness may come as a disappointment to some readers interested in this aspect of the mind, and is perhaps surprising given that many have viewed the 40Hz gamma oscillation as one of the clearest correlates of consciousness.

never enjoyed so much any book before on this subject.

Rhythms of the BrainProfessor Buzsáki has written an excellent, scholarly book on brain oscillations, his speciality. The work is dense but very readable and is all the better for being by a single author rather than an edited collection of review articles. Appropriately, the book is divided into 13 cycles rather than chapters and each cycle ends with a brief and useful summary. He combines ideas from the neurosciences with those from chaos theory and non-linear dynamics, pointing out in the introduction (p13) that "complexity can be formally defined as nonlinearity and from nonlinear equations, unexpected solutions emerge". Put simply complex behaviour of a dynamic system such as the brain cannot be predicted from the behaviour of individual neurones or small neuronal ensembles.Professor Buzsáki promotes the view that the inside-our approach to neuroscience enhances our understanding of relatively unperturbed brain states because "self-generated behaviour and emergent large-scale oscillations tend to occur in the unperturbed brain". In the introductory cycle he argues that during exploration of the brain, experimental perturbation of network interactions and emergent functions will yield hints of causality. He then successfully adopts this approach for much of the rest of the book. In cycles 2 and 3 Professor Buzsáki discusses form and function, indicating that preferentially connected areas of the cortex form the basis of higher order cortical systems, e.g. for movement and/or vision. He points out that the diversity of cortical functions can only be achieved by inhibition and by complex networks of interneurones offering the basis for temporal coordination, often accomplished by oscillations. In Cycle 4 (Windows on the Brain), he outlines the currently available monitoring techniques most frequently used to investigate the oscillatory behaviour of neuronal networks, including EEG, positron emission tomography, optical imaging, recordings from single neurones, and high density recordings with silicon probes.Professor Buzsáki's fundamental argument is that most of the brain's activity is generated from within and that external inputs cause only minor departures from its internal programme. Thus the brain "does not simply process information but also generates information", observable in the EEG as a blend of rhythms unable to phase-lock with each other because their mean frequencies are not integers. These oscillations are metastable and result from the physical architecture of neuronal networks (cycle 5). In cycle 6 he discusses synchronization by oscillation based on self-organized interactions among neurones, which he argues may be the source of cognitive function. Cycle 7 discusses the self-organized oscillatory rhythms connected with rest and sleep - the default pattern of the brain in the absence of environmental inputs. In cycle 8 the perturbation of various default patterns by experience is explored and it is shown that sensory representations in the brain acquire real-world metrics early in development by first acquiring information about the three-dimensional nature of the skeletal muscle system. Cycle 9 considers the "Gamma Buzz" in the waking, activated cortex through which neuronal assemblies organize themselves into "temporal packages" lasting 15-30 ms which may be involved in perceptual binding of object features. Buzsáki then goes on to show that perceptions and actions are brain-state dependent (cycle 10), which adds to his argument that a given environmental perturbation leads to modification of "a perpetually evolving network pattern in the brain's landscape". Cycle 11 talks of navigation in real and memory space and how the hippocampus is the search engine for the retrieval of archived information with theta oscillations related to episodic and semantic memory, path integration and "map-based"/landmark navigation. Further transient oscillations are used to transfer this information to the neocortex, when cortical assemblies are transiently entrained to the theta rhythm (cycle 12). The final cycle investigates the relationship between structural connectivity and global function.It is difficult to do justice to Professor Buzsáki's tour de force in a short review. I can only recommend that those with an interest in the neuroscience should read and learn from it.

Dr Buszaki has spent a lifetime studying the oscillations in the brain, and this book shows his love of the science, and depth of knowledge.It's not for the faint hearted (I haven't finished reading it all yet) but is surprisingly readable for such a deep topic.

Libro de gran calidad y contenido muy interesante para aquellos interesados ​​en las áreas de neurociencia.

Very good book

È interessante. Devo continuare la lettura. Sono all'inizio. Per ora soddisfa le mie esigenze. Non è un libro squisitamente divulgativo. Seppure i contenuti tecnici siano di accesso a chiunque abbia delle basi universitarie di scienze biologiche e o anatomofisiologia

出版当時の最先端な脳波の解釈について、非常に勉強になった。これを基礎により以上の勉強をし、臨床に役立てたい。

Good read.Just wouldn't purchase anything from PBC Distributors. Had a terrible experience.