Tuesday, January 21, 2014

[Comp-neuro] New Introductory Text targeting Psychology Undergrads

I have recently authored a book on computational modelling with the psychology undergraduate in mind. Many psychology students come to their interest in computational neuroscience and psychology late in their undergraduate careers and because of the way psychology programs are structured these students can find themselves without sufficient familiarity with the basics of mathematical notation, computer programming, and introductory modeling concepts to be able to explore that interest.

My hope is that this book can serve as an invitation to such students. I would like to give them some basic conceptual knowledge, while also helping to improve their confidence by showing them what they can do. For the former I go over the basics of some common notation and programming concepts, in the context of some traditional computational topics (the Integrate and Fire neuron, the Perceptron) while for the latter I structure the exercises so that they can usually be done using spreadsheet "programs".

While the readers of this list are unlikely to be teaching such students, you probably do meet them from time to time, or have colleagues who might be looking for a book to use for this audience. If so, I hope you will consider making them aware of mine. If you do look at the book and have suggestions for changes or improvements, I would appreciate you passing them on to me as I use this book for an undergraduate seminar course.

Thank you, Britt Anderson PhD & MD; University of Waterloo (Psychology and Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience)

Title: Computational Neuroscience and Cognitive Modelling: a student's introduction to methods and procedures. SAGE ISBN 978-1-4462-4929-1 (978-1-4462-4930-1)
Link to table of contents: http://www.sagepub.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book238062#tabview=toc
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