Likely Main Text:  NEURAL ORGANIZATION.

Authors:  Arbib, Erdi, and Szentagothai.

Publisher:  Bradford, 1998.

Qualifications of Participants:  Interest in neural modeling.  Modicum
of background in neuroanatomy, physiology and mathematics would be
helpful.

Plus other papers and/or books recommended by participants.

Outlook:  We will meet once or twice a week to discuss our readings,
suggest alternative modeling strategies, and solve world problems.  We
will definitely cover the first four chapters to begin with:
1. Many Themes of Neural Organization

2. A Structural Overview

3. A Functional Overview

4. A Dynamical Perspective

The remainder of the book discusses a number of systems (to wit,
olfactory, hippocampal, thalamic, cerebral cortex, cerebellum, basal
ganglia) followed by a "prospects for a neuroscience of cognition"
chapter.  Since if the book possessed normal-sized pages, it would
probably exceed 500 pages, covering the entire book might lead to thin
gruel.  Hence, we will probably select some systems and go from there.
One possibility we will consider is that of mocking up the rudiments
of a functional system intended to perform some task, such as pattern
identification and then proceeding to specify the probably neural
mechanisms, and their interactions, responsible for the various
sub-processes and the performance at large. Even a relatively coarse
depiction of the major lacunae, not to mention cogent neural
components,in the putative neural system might be instructive.
Interesting debates might surge around the standard differential
equations approaches vs.alternatives such as theory of stochastic
processes (admittedly, there being some mathematical and strategy
overlap).