Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

This book will certainly help you understand the science, maths and engineering that goes into your mind working. Those science or maths minded people will certain like this book. I found this book very interesting. I learnt so much. I especially loved reading about the different type of research that has gone into understand the functions of the mind. The author used lots of peoples research and hypothesis to help prove or disprove the theories or how the mind actually function and the processes it has to go through. There are also alot of famous names that crop you that you would never thought helped in finding out the brains functionality.
This book is certainly a very interest academic read. Go on give it a go learn this you never even considered before.

Mathematically modelling the brain (not the mind), the book does exactly what it promises. It provides around a dozen different mathematical ways of looking at specific brain activities and it links each example to the (neuro) biology of the processes involved, as well as descriptions of the historical scientists who made the discoveries.

The book combines scientific insights with detailed mathematical information, although it keeps the formulas out of the text in an appendix at the end. The book also provides asides about the historical figures it mentions. For example, we hear that Claude Shannon at Bell Laboratories used to do his thinking riding a bike around the lab whilst juggling (47%). Depending on readers preferences, they will find examples like this as either enlivening, or distracting.

Personally I enjoyed the detailed scientific descriptions and I particularly appreciated how the author showed the developments taking place, step by step.

For example, in chapter 3 we hear about the 1950s US Navy Computer, Perceptron. It was designed to mimic the binary nature of how brain neurons fire on and off, to give a truth/falsity model. But it was unable to differentiate two ons (trues) from two offs (falses) which was a major problem. So a multi-layered neural network approach was designed to use backpropagation to resolve the problem.

This solution worked, but it was no longer ‘modelling’ what neuroscientists thought was occurring in the brain. It was suggesting an alternative way in which the brain could work, and so it led to new investigations to see whether the brain was in fact working in that way.

The book is 400 pages, so it contains a lot of information. Even so I was occasionally left wanting more information about some threads in chapters.

For example, chapter 10 focuses upon how the brain can be modelled using probabilistic logic. One of the problems with this kind of logic is that the outputs depend very heavily upon what is assumed as a background normality (ie the Prior probability). At the end of the chapter the author asks whether these background probabilities are inherited or learned. She cites an experiment involving chickens who were subject from hatching, to light sources from below (ie contrary to an above model of sunlight). This seems to have surprised the chickens, thus suggesting elements of inherited expectations.

Similar experiments with human babies have shown surprise when toys defy laws of gravity. I was interested to know more about the extent to which basic knowledge could be inherited, rather than learned, but the chapter closed and we were onto the next topic.

Overall this is a very detailed and informative book which readers interested in Maths and Neurobiology will particularly enjoy.

This is an honest review of an Advance Review Copy of the text.