2 Just like the sequel to a successful movie, O'Reilly and Munakata's " Computational Explorations in Cognitive Neuroscience " aims to follow up and expand on the original 1986 " Parallel Distributed Processing " volumes edited by Computational Explorations: Not only does this volume visit many of the problems and paradigms that the original books were focused on (so making Computational Explor...

In order to model real ecological systems one has to consider many species that interact in complex ways. However, most of the recent theoretical studies have been restricted to few species systems with rather trivial interactions. The few studies dealing with larger number of species and/or more complex interaction schemes are mostly restricted to numerical explorations. In this paper we deter...

This article looks at Skilling’s nested sampling from a physical perspective and interprets it as a microcanonical demon algorithm. Using key quantities of statistical physics we investigate the performance of nested sampling on complex systems such as Ising, Potts and protein models. We show that releasing multiple demons helps to smooth the truncated prior and eases sampling from it because t...

In the last 25 years, the explorations of the Voyager and Galileo missions have resulted in an entirely new view of the icy worlds orbiting the giant outer planets. These objects show a huge diversity in their characteristics, resulting from their formation histories, internal processes and interactions with their space environments. This paper will review the current state of knowledge about t...

This study presents novel insights into the morphological adaptations occurring in lumbar spine after 60-day head-down bed rest and potential role of artificial gravity (AG) to mitigate them. Results demonstrated no protective effect AG protocols used this study. In atrophied paraspinal muscles, ratio lipids versus intramuscular water increased postural which could impair muscle function during...

The hippocampal region contains several principal neuron types, some of which show distinct spatial firing patterns. The region is also known for its diversity in neural circuits and many have attempted to causally relate network architecture within and between these unique circuits to functional outcome. Still, much is unknown about the mechanisms or network properties by which the functionall...

This study investigates a computational design approach to generate volumetric decompositions of given, arbitrary, three-dimensional shapes into self supporting, discrete-element assemblies. These assemblies are structures formed by individual units that remain in equilibrium solely as a result of compressive and frictional contact forces between the elements. This paper presents a prototypical...

Using various versions of evolutionary computation, we explore fitness landscape defined on continuous synaptic weight space of a fully connected neural network model of associative memory. Thus far, we have found many different solutions that give a function of associative memory to a network. However, the Hebbian peak, one of the most familiar solutions, has never been located in these explor...

The popularity of autonomous mobile robots have been rapidly increasing due to their new emerging application areas, from room cleaning, tourist guidance to space explorations. However, the development of a satisfactory control algorithm that will enable the autonomous mobile robots to navigate safely especially in dynamic environments is still an open research problem. In this paper, a newly p...