Neuroscience

Maureen Clerc, Laurent Bougrain, Fabien Lotte

Brain–computer interfaces (BCI) are devices which measure brain activity and translate it into messages or commands, thereby opening up many investigation and application possibilities. This book provides keys for understanding and designing these multi-disciplinary interfaces, which require many fields of expertise such as neuroscience, statistics, informatics and psychology.

This first volume, Methods and Perspectives, presents all the basic knowledge underlying the working principles of BCI. It opens with the anatomical and physiological organization of the brain, followed by the brain activity involved in BCI, and following with information extraction, which involves signal processing and machine learning methods. BCI usage is then described, from the angle of human learning and human-machine interfaces.

The basic notions developed in this reference book are intended to be accessible to all readers interested in BCI, whatever their background. More advanced material is also offered, for readers who want to expand their knowledge in disciplinary fields underlying BCI.

Neuroscience

Maureen Clerc, Laurent Bougrain, Fabien Lotte

Brain–computer interfaces (BCI) are devices which measure brain activity and translate it into messages or commands, thereby opening up many possibilities for investigation and application. This book provides keys for understanding and designing these multi-disciplinary interfaces, which require many fields of expertise such as neuroscience, statistics, informatics and psychology.

This second volume, Technology and Applications, is focused on the field of BCI from the perspective of its end users, such as those with disabilities to practitioners. Covering clinical applications and the field of video games, the book then goes on to explore user needs which drive the design and development of BCI. The software used for their design, primarily OpenViBE, is explained step by step, before a discussion on the use of BCI from ethical, philosophical and social perspectives.

The basic notions developed in this reference book are intended to be accessible to all readers interested in BCI, whatever their background. More advanced material is also offered, for readers who want to expand their knowledge in disciplinary fields underlying BCI.

Computer Science

Ethem Alpaydin

A concise overview of machine learning-computer programs that learn from data-which underlies applications that include recommendation systems, face recognition, and driverless cars.

Today, machine learning underlies a range of applications we use every day, from product recommendations to voice recognition-as well as some we don't yet use everyday, including driverless cars. It is the basis of the new approach in computing where we do not write programs but collect data; the idea is to learn the algorithms for the tasks automatically from data. As computing devices grow more ubiquitous, a larger part of our lives and work is recorded digitally, and as “Big Data” has gotten bigger, the theory of machine learning-the foundation of efforts to process that data into knowledge-has also advanced. In this book, machine learning expert Ethem Alpaydin offers a concise overview of the subject for the general reader, describing its evolution, explaining important learning algorithms, and presenting example applications.

Alpaydin offers an account of how digital technology advanced from number-crunching mainframes to mobile devices, putting today's machine learning boom in context. He describes the basics of machine learning and some applications; the use of machine learning algorithms for pattern recognition; artificial neural networks inspired by the human brain; algorithms that learn associations between instances, with such applications as customer segmentation and learning recommendations; and reinforcement learning, when an autonomous agent learns act so as to maximize reward and minimize penalty. Alpaydin then considers some future directions for machine learning and the new field of “data science,” and discusses the ethical and legal implications for data privacy and security.

Neuroscience

Zoltan Torey

An account of the emergence of the mind: how the brain acquired self-awareness, functional autonomy, the ability to think, and the power of speech.

How did the human mind emerge from the collection of neurons that makes up the brain? How did the brain acquire self-awareness, functional autonomy, language, and the ability to think, to understand itself and the world? In this volume in the Essential Knowledge series, Zoltan Torey offers an accessible and concise description of the evolutionary breakthrough that created the human mind.

Drawing on insights from evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and linguistics, Torey reconstructs the sequence of events by which Homo erectus became Homo sapiens. He describes the augmented functioning that underpins the emergent mind-a new (“off-line”) internal response system with which the brain accesses itself and then forms a selection mechanism for mentally generated behavior options. This functional breakthrough, Torey argues, explains how the animal brain's “awareness” became self-accessible and reflective-that is, how the human brain acquired a conscious mind. Consciousness, unlike animal awareness, is not a unitary phenomenon but a composite process. Torey's account shows how protolanguage evolved into language, how a brain subsystem for the emergent mind was built, and why these developments are opaque to introspection. We experience the brain's functional autonomy, he argues, as free will.

Torey proposes that once life began, consciousness had to emerge-because consciousness is the informational source of the brain's behavioral response. Consciousness, he argues, is not a newly acquired “quality,” “cosmic principle,” “circuitry arrangement,” or “epiphenomenon,” as others have argued, but an indispensable working component of the living system's manner of functioning.

Occult

Peter J. Carroll

Two complete volumes in one. Liber Null contains a selection of extremely powerful rituals and exercises for committed occultists. Psychonaut is a manual comprising the theory and practice of magic aimed atthose seeking to perform group magic, or who work as shamanic priests to the community.