Whole-brain modelling : Cartography of the Dynamics of Mind

This is the first book to present a comprehensive overview of the emerging whole-brain modelling field, helping readers understand the principles of brain activity underlying not just ordinary cognition and emotion but also the deep changes in consciousness arising from sleep, coma, psychedelics, and neuropsychiatric disease.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.Whole-brain modelling provides a comprehensive overview of sophisticated whole-brain models able to capture the underlying mechanisms of brain dynamics, which are fundamental to gain a full understanding of the cartography of the dynamics of mind. The book is written for an audience of students and scholars coming from fields such as neuroscience, psychology, biology, physics, mathematics, engineering and medical science. Importantly, the book is written such that the necessary advanced maths and physics are easily accessible.Deco and Kringelbach provide all the key elements for understanding how these powerful computer models can accurately reproduce human brain activity in silico as measured through a combination of many different neuroimaging techniques. These computational models can be treated like animal models, where systematic lesion and stimulation allow for accurate descriptions of the precise mechanisms underlying human brain activity.In this book, the reader will gain a deeper understanding of how the mind is shaped through hierarchical orchestration of brain dynamics. This is made possible by incorporating fundamental principles of modern physics, including stochastic thermodynamics and turbulence, which have already shed new light on the inner workings of the brain in health and disease.