(Part 3) Top products from r/neuroscience

I didn't find Theoretical Neuroscience particularly readable as others in the thread have said, but it is the go-to book for the classic topics in the field. I found Fundamentals of Computational Neuroscience to be a much much better book for introductions. From Computer to Brain : Foundations of Computational Neuroscience was fairly approachable. On the more cognitive side, From Neuron to Cognition via Computational Neuroscience was pretty good. If you like the nonlinear systems side, Dynamical Systems in Neuroscience: The Geometry of Excitability and Bursting was pretty tough to read but full of good content.

It really depends on what subsets of comp neuro you're most interested in. I worked mostly on the cognitive side, and I was never super satisfied with any books on comp neuro in that area. I think the field is just too young for a great summary to exist beyond the neuronal/small network level.

There is a ton of interesting mathematics that goes into other areas of neuro that wouldn't typically be included in Computational Neuroscience. Different imaging methods, for instance, have some pretty fun math involved and are very active areas of research.

You are going to get a lot of recommendations for 'mainstream' neuroscience books, which is not a bad thing, but it might be useful/fun to get an alternative perspective as well. Something like The Embodied Mind by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch might be nice. Also a 'networks/graph theory' approach would be a great perspective to get. Networks of the Brain by Olaf Sporns is a great resource, and these approaches are on the upswing IMO.

Lazy citations:

• Anderson (2017) [PDF]: Of Bayes and bullets: an embodied, situated, targeting-based account of predictive processing
  
• Bastos et al. (2012): Canonical microcircuits for predictive coding
  
• Clark (2013): Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science
  
• Clark (2016): Surfing uncertainty: prediction, action, and the embodied mind
  
• Friston (2002): Functional integration and inference in the brain
  
• Friston (2003): Learning and inference in the brain
  
• Friston (2005): A theory of cortical responses
  
• Friston (2008): Hierarchical models in the brain
  
• Friston (2010): The free energy principle: a unified brain theory?
  
• Friston (2011): Functional and effective connectivity: a review
  
• Friston et al. (2018): The graphical brain: belief propagation and active inference
  
• Hohwy (2007a): Functional integration and the mind
  
• Hohwy (2007b) [PDF]: The sense of self in the phenomenology of agency and perception
  
• Hohwy et al. (2008): Predictive coding explains binocular rivalry: an epistemological review
  
• Hohwy (2012): Attention and conscious perception in the hypothesis testing brain
  
• Hohwy (2013): The predictive mind
  
• Howhy (2015): The neural organ explains the mind
  
• Howhy (2016): The self-evidencing brain
  
• Kirchoff et al. (2018): The Markov blankets of life: autonomy, active inference, and the free energy principle
  
• Knill and Pouget (2004): The Bayesian brain: the role of uncertainty in neural coding and computation
  
• Parr and Friston (2018): The anatomy of inference: generative models and brain structure
  
• Ramstead et al. (2018): Answering Schrodinger's question: a free-energy formulation
  
• Seth (2013): Interoceptive inference, emotion, and the embodied self
  
• Seth (2015) [PDF]: The cybernetic Bayesian brain
  
• Seth and Friston (2016): Active interoceptive inference and the emotional brain
  
• Seth et al. (2011): An interoceptive predictive coding model of conscious presence
  
• Tenenbaum et al. (2011): How to grow a mind: statistics, structure, and abstraction.
  
• Wiese and Metzinger (2017) [PDF]: Vanilla PP for philosophers: a primer on predictive processing

The neuroscientist Antti Revonuso has a book "Consciousness: the science of subjectivity" which has a good mix of the philosophy and science of consciousness. Christof Koch, probably one of the leading neuroscientists who study consciousness, has a few books as well. The Quest for Consciousness is one of his, which has lots of neuroscience particularly visual neuroscience in it. That is mainly science, not much philosophy. Another neuroscientist who studies consciousness is Stanislas Dehaene who wrote a good book Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. These are a few off the top of my head. Click on the image of each book on the left in amazon (which opens up a preview) and scroll to the contents page and see if any of these books are the kind of thing you are looking for.

By the way, there is a free masterclass on consciousness with Christof Koch on the World Science U website. You may also be interested in that.

Additionally you may like to check out the subreddit /r/sciphilconsciousness, which is all about the sharing and discussion of content related to the science and philosophy of consciousness.

Every book on consciousness will have its own pet theory. I haven't found many great books on the neuroscience of consciousness, though Giulio Tononi and Christof Koch have a pretty good review paper on the subject. The one caveat is that they mostly review evidence for their own theory of consciousness, the Information Integration Theory.

As for the philosophy of consciousness, there are a number of good books, again each with their own agenda/pet theory. If you want the entire spectrum of opinions, check out Paul Churchland's Matter and Consciousness, which both provides a good overview of the field and also offers a defense of Churchland's materialist view; I'd also check out John Searle's The Rediscovery of the Mind, which presents Searle's biological naturalism, a sort of "centrist" view in the array of popular positions, and which is written in very straightforward language; a third option, which is more complicated than the other two but is really important in the field, is Chalmers' The Conscious Mind.

Hope that helps!

Some excellent popular book options are:

The Tell Tale Brain - V.S. Ramachandran

Phantoms in the Brain - V.S. Ramachandran

Synaptic Self - Joseph LeDoux


Also mentioned by other posters, Norman Doidge and Oliver Sacks.

All of these are really approachable for beginners and I enjoyed them all greatly as an undergrad way back when.

Anything from Oliver Sacks always worth reading imo.

• Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain!
  
  
• The Compassionate Brain: A Revolutionary Guide to Developing Your Intelligence to Its Full Potential: How Empathy Creates Intelligence!
  
  
• Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain!
  
  
• Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions!
  
  
• In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind!
  
  
• The Man with a Shattered World: The History of a Brain Wound!
  
  not really neuroscience, but interesting imho:
  
  
• How the Mind Works!
  
  
  *(hopes formatting works)

I love this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Secret-World-Sleep-Surprising-Science/dp/0230107591/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=The+Secret+World+of+Sleep%3A+The+Surprising+Science+of+the+Mind+at+Rest&qid=1556476017&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull

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For a more technical view my oldish copy of Neuroscience edition 5. I think (Purves) had a great chapter, not sure newer editions still have it.

Applying convolution in artificial neural networks was actually inspired by a simple model of the visual cortex (i.e. in the brain). If you want to read a fully technical overview, I'd suggest the section "The Neuroscientific Basis for Convolutional Networks" in chapter 9 of this book.

I'm gonna try to keep this post short and do a quick summary right now. Essentially, at early stages of visual processing the difference in activity between adjacent photoreceptor cells in the eye is taken, mostly due to lateral inhibitory connections on both bipolar neurons and the downstream bipolar neurons. This is essentially a convolution operation - just as you may subtract the brightness of adjacent pixels from a central pixel in a 2D convolution, this is done in the retina using lateral inhibitory connections. The section in that deep learning textbook I posted implies that this occurs only in visual cortex, but it actually occurs in the retina and LGN as well. So just as in modern CNNs, there are stacks of convolution operations in the real brain.

Of course, the convolution that occurs in artificial neural networks is a simplification of the actual process that occurs in brains, but it was inspired by the functionality and organization of the brain.

I'd like to get the Muse myself, but the only program they have released doesn't actually show the EEG info, they have released something (the SDK) which one can get that info from, if they know code. In demonstrations they have the EEG shown and people can type words with their thoughts.

I recently got the books Your Memory: how it works and how to improve it which has a ton of memory citations, and Moonwalking with Einstein: the art and science of remembering everything which I have yet to read

Depending on your level of proficiency, you might want to have a look at Biophysics of Computation by Christof Koch. Lots of areas of neuroscience are maths heavy. You're generally better off finding an area you think is interesting and then taking a mathematical approach. Just about every area will have some mathematical angle.

Consciousness: An Introduction, by Susan Blackmore, is great. http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-An-Introduction-Susan-Blackmore/dp/0199739099

You have independently arrived at the mathematical foundations of music theory.

You might enjoy Musimathics, an introduction to music theory through math.

http://www.amazon.com/Musimathics-Mathematical-Foundations-Music-Volume/dp/0262516551

The Brain's Way of Healing

The Brain That Changes Itself

Learned Optimism

'Introduction to neuropsychopharmacology'

http://amzn.com/0195380533

I would suggest getting her a few smaller things and this book to get up to the target price:

Cajal's Butterflies of the Soul: Science and Art, http://www.amazon.com/Cajals-Butterflies-Soul-Science-Art/dp/0195392701

Also if she is a graduate student, postdoc or up for tenure one of those other things should be a massage.

https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing-Trauma/dp/0143127748

https://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Course-Computational-Neuroscience/dp/0262038250