An analysis of the development of the political relationship between Britain and her American colonies between 1607 and 1788.

In 1616, an English adventurer, Nathaniel Courthope, stepped ashore on a remote island in the East Indies on a secret mission - to persuade the islanders of Run to grant a monopoly to England over their nutmeg, a fabulously valuable spice in Europe. This infuriated the Dutch, who were determined to control the world's nutmeg supply. For five years Courthope and his band of thirty men were besieged by a force one hundred times greater - and his heroism set in motion the events that led to the founding of Manhattan, the greatest city on earth. A beautifully told adventure story and a fascinating depiction of exploration in the seventeenth century, NATHANIEL'S NUTMEG sheds a remarkable light on history.

The six contributions in Connectionist Symbol Processing address the current tension within the artificial intelligence community between advocates of powerful symbolic representations that lack efficient learning procedures and advocates of relatively simple learning procedures that lack the ability to represent complex structures effectively. The authors seek to extend the representational power of connectionist networks without abandoning the automatic learning that makes these networks interesting.Aware of the huge gap that needs to be bridged, the authors intend their contributions to be viewed as exploratory steps in the direction of greater representational power for neural networks. If successful, this research could make it possible to combine robust general purpose learning procedures and inherent representations of artificial intelligence -- a synthesis that could lead to new insights into both representation and learning.

In this groundbreaking work, computer scientist Leslie G. Valiant details a promising new computational approach to studying the intricate workings of the human brain. Focusing on the brain's enigmatic ability to access quickly a massive store of accumulated information during reasoning processes, the author asks how such feats are possible given the extreme constraints imposed by the brain's finite number of neurons, their limited speed of communication, and their restricted interconnectivity. Valiant proposes a "neuroidal model" that serves as a vehicle to explore these fascinating questions. While embracing the now classical theories of McCulloch and Pitts, the neuroidal model also accommodates state information in the neurons, more flexible timing mechanisms, a variety of assumptions about interconnectivity, and the possibility that different areas perform different functions. Programmable so that a wide range of algorithmic theories can be described and evaluated, the model provides a concrete computational language and a unified framework in which diverse cognitive phenomena--such as memory, learning, and reasoning--can be systematically and concurrently analyzed. Requiring no specialized knowledge, Circuits of the Mind masterfully offers an exciting new approach to brain science for students and researchers in computer science, neurobiology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science.

This book is an introduction to pattern theory, the theory behind the task of analyzing types of signals that the real world presents to us. It deals with generating mathematical models of the patterns in those signals and algorithms for analyzing the data based on these models. It exemplifies the view of applied mathematics as starting with a collection of problems from some area of science and then seeking the appropriate mathematics for clarifying the experimental data and the underlying processes of producing these data. An emphasis is placed on finding the mathematical and, where needed, computational tools needed to reach those goals, actively involving the reader in this process. Among other examples and problems, the following areas are treated: music as a realvalued function of continuous time, character recognition, the decomposition of an image into regions with distinct colors and textures, facial recognition, and scaling effects present in natural images caused by their statistical selfsimilarity.

Written by the world's leading memory scientists in a highly accessible language, this volume brings together facts and theories of cognitive psychology; memory development in childhood and old age; memory impairment in brain injury and disease; the emergence of memory functions from the brain; as well as reviews of current behavioral, neuroimaging, and computer simulation theories of memory. The last decades in particular have seen the emergence of a genuine science of memory, based first on behavioral studies and more recently on the new technologies of brain scanning. These recent studies have resulted in theories that are rich, complex, and far-reaching in their implications. "The Oxford Handbook of Memory" lays out these theories, and the evidence on which the theories are based. The important new discoveries of the last few years are described, along with their consequences for professionals in the areas of law, engineering, and clinical medicine. Endel Tulving and Fergus Craik, two world-class experts on memory, provide this handbook as a guide to the dynamic and exciting field of memory research. Individual chapters are written by eminent researchers, who provide insight into their special areas, and outline challenges for the work that lies ahead. The book is exhaustive in its coverage - examining such topics as the development of memory, the contents of memory, memory in the laboratory and in everyday use, memory in decline, the organization of memory, and theories of memory-making this book ideal for psychologists, memory researchers, neuroscientists, and graduate students of psychology.

These collected essays from leading figures in cognitive psychology represent the latest research and thinking in the field. The volume is organized around four "Endelian" themes: encoding and retrieval processes in memory; the neuropsychology of memory; classificatory systems for memory; and consciousness, emotion, and memory.

In the past 25 years, the frontal lobes have dominated human neuroscience research. Functional neuroimaging studies have revealed their importance to brain networks involved in nearly every aspect of mental and cognitive functioning. Studies of patients with focal brain lesions have expanded on early case study evidence of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive changes associated with frontal lobe brain damage. The role of frontal lobe function and dysfunction in human development (in both children and older adults), psychiatric disorders, the dementias, and other brain diseases has also received rapidly increasing attention. In this useful text, 14 leading frontal lobe researchers review and synthesize the current state of knowledge on frontal lobe function, including structural and functional brain imaging, brain network analysis, aging and dementia, traumatic brain injury, rehabilitation, attention, memory, and consciousness. The book therefore provides a state-of-the-art account of research in this exciting area, and also highlights a number of new findings by some of the world's top researchers.

Since the publication of the first edition in 1966, Eye and Brain has established itself worldwide as an essential introduction to the basic phenomena of visual perception. In this book, Richard L. Gregory offers clear explanations of how we see brightness, movement, color, and objects, and he explores the phenomena of visual illusions to establish principles about how perception normally works and why it sometimes fails. Although successive editions have incorporated new discoveries and ideas, Gregory completely revised and updated the book for this publication, adding more than thirty new illustrations. The phenomena of illusion continue to be a major theme in the book, in which the author makes a new attempt to provide a comprehensive classification system. There are also new sections on what babies see and how they learn to see, on motion perception, and tantalizing glimpses of the relationship between vision and consciousness and of the impact of new brain imaging techniques. In addition, the presentation of the text and illustrations has been improved by the larger format and new page design. The thousands of readers of the previous editions of Eye and Brain will find this new revised edition even more attractive and enthralling.