What makes us human? A unique brain perspective in new book
Written by professors Gustavo Deco (UPF) and Morten Kringelbach (University of Oxford), this open-access book aims to explain how the brain can give rise to the complexity of the mind
The cover of the new book “Whole-brain modelling. Cartography of the dynamics of mind” poses the central question of what makes us human. Written by Professors Gustavo Deco and Morten L Kringelbach and published with Oxford University Press, the book is concerned with the central mystery; namely, how the brain, a strange but hugely powerful object weighing around 1.5 kilos of mostly fat and a combination of water, protein, carbohydrates and salts, can somehow give rise to our complex minds.
Looking closer, the brain contains blood vessels and nerves, including neurons in the grey matter and glial cells in the white matter. But what are the important ingredients that allow the brain to survive and thrive?
The book recounts important scientific breakthroughs in the field, including those by the authors in their many decades of reverse-engineering the brain. Working closely together in Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Universities of Oxford (UK) and Aarhus (Denmark), they have joined forces in the International Centre for Flourishing, from where they have led the way in making precise whole-brain models that have started to provide mechanistic information on the central mystery of how the brain makes mind.
Based on their influential research, the authors carefully take the reader by the hand through a distillation of ideas formed over many years of patrolling the borders of our ignorance, creating a truly interdisciplinary science using tools from biology, philosophy, psychology, mathematics and physics.
Prof Deco explains: “It is our hope that the book will present a useful, theoretical framework that can provide the scaffolding necessary for a full explanation of brain computation. The focus of our book is on how best to build a cartography of the dynamics of mind by providing a description of how best to determine hierarchy and information flow in the brain and its dynamics. To this end, the book presents different model-free methods that can describe brain states with varying degrees of accuracy. More importantly, though, we show how these measures can be incorporated in whole-brain models that can be systematically probed, allowing for the underlying causal mechanisms to be discovered.”
Prof Kringelbach adds: “Already at this stage, whole-brain models have allowed for a much better understanding of the orchestration of brain function. The book shares the insights into findings of distributed computation in the healthy brain and its breakdown in disease; and as such may provide new avenues for prevention, intervention and treatment. We are strong believers in open science and have used our own funds to have the book made available as a free PDF. We hope the book will provide inspiration for colleagues and students to make new important discoveries and help create a more flourishing world."
Overall, the book provides a sense of the great expectations for whole-brain models to provide a deeper understanding of the emergence of a generative cartography of the necessary computation that ultimately makes us human and allows us to thrive.
The book Whole-brain modelling. Cartography of the dynamics of mind is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence.
Advance praise:
“In my view, this book is a fundamental event in the emergent field of brain modelling. It is a unique contribution to our global understanding of the human brain, from molecules to consciousness.” Professor Jean-Pierre Changeux (Institut Pasteur/Collège de France)
“This book is a major milestone in our quest to understand causal mechanisms underlying the continuously evolving brain dynamics of widespread multiscale networks, characterised by condition-dependent self-organisation, going through metastable and transient arrangements. A must-read for anyone interested in the future of systems neuroscience.” Professor Nikos K Logothetis (Director, International Center for Primate Brain Research, China)
“This is really a masterpiece.” Professor Patric Hagmann (University Hospital Lausanne, Switzerland)
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