Neural Assemblies

In the new edition of Neural Assemblies, the author places his original ideas and motivations within the framework of modern and cognitive neuroscience and gives a short and focused overview of the development of computational neuroscience and artificial neural networks over the last 40 years. 

In this book the author develops a theory of how the human brain might function. Starting with a motivational introduction to the brain as an organ of information processing, he presents a computational perspective on the basic concepts and ideas of neuroscience research on the underlying principles of brain function. In addition, the reader is introduced to the most important methods from computer science and mathematical modeling that are required for a computational understanding of information processing in the brain.

Written by an expert in the field of neural information processing, this book offers a personal historical view of the development of artificial intelligence, artificial neural networks, and computational cognitive neuroscience over the last 40 years, with a focus on the realization of higher cognitive functions rather than more peripheral sensory or motor organization. The book is therefore aimed at students and researchers who want to understand how the basic neuroscientific and computational concepts in the study of brain function have changed over the last decades.

Prof Dr Günther Palm

Professor Palm began his studies of mathematics at the University of Hamburg and graduated at the Eberhard-Karls-University of Tübingen with a PhD thesis on “Entropie und Generatoren in dynamischen Verbänden“ supervised by Prof. Dr. Rainer Nagel in 1975. He then worked as a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen, on topics of quantitative neuroanatomy, information theory, nonlinear systems theory, associative memory and brain theory from 1975 to 1988. During that time he spent one year (1983/1984) in Berlin as a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg. In 1988 he became professor for theoretical brain research at the University of Düsseldorf. Since 1991 he is director of the Institute of Neural Information Processing at Ulm University. He retired in 2016 and is working part-time on neural data analysis at the Forschungszentrum Jülich since 2017.

Professor Palm's research focus is oninformation theory, neural networks, associative memory, and specifically on Hebbian cell assemblies. By 2015, he has published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles in international journals, 60 invited contributions, and (co-)edited 8 books. He is author of the monographs “Neural Assemblies. An Alternative Approach to Artificial Intelligence” (1982), and “Novelty, Information and Surprise” (2012).