[visionlist] New book: Sensory Cue Integration

[Michael Landy]

Dear colleagues,

May I be so bold as to suggest that our new book, which just became 
available, may be of interest to some of you:

Sensory Cue Integration
Oxford University Press, 2011
Editors: Julia Trommershäuser, Konrad Körding, and Michael S. Landy

Links:

Oxford: 
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Psychology/CognitivePsychology/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTM4NzI0Nw==

Amazon: 
http://www.amazon.com/Sensory-Cue-Integration-Computational-Neuroscience/dp/0195387244/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314971890&sr=1-8

Description:

This book provides an introduction into both computational models and 
experimental paradigms that are concerned with sensory cue integration 
both within and between sensory modalities. Importantly, across 
behavioral, electrophysiological and theoretical approaches, Bayesian 
statistics is emerging as a common language in which cue-combination 
problems can be expressed. This book focuses on the emerging 
probabilistic way of thinking about these problems. These approaches 
derive from the realization that all our sensors are noisy and moreover 
are often affected by ambiguity. For example, mechanoreceptor outputs 
are variable and they cannot distinguish if a perceived force is caused 
by the weight of an object or by force we are producing ourselves. The 
computational approaches described in this book aim at formalizing the 
uncertainty of cues. They describe cue combination as the nervous 
system's attempt to minimize uncertainty in its estimates and to choose 
successful actions. Some computational approaches described in the 
chapters of this book are concerned with the application of such 
statistical ideas to real-world cue-combination problems, such as shape 
and depth perception. Other parts of the book ask how uncertainty may be 
represented in the nervous system and used for cue combination.

The broadening scope of probabilistic approaches to cue combination is 
highlighted in the breadth of topics covered in this book: the chapters 
summarize and discuss computational approaches and behavioral evidence 
aimed at understanding the combination of visual, auditory, 
proprioceptive, and haptic cues. Some chapters address the combination 
of cues within a single sensory modality while others address the 
combination across sensory modalities. Neural implementation, behavior, 
and theory are considered. The unifying aspect of this book is the focus 
on the uncertainty intrinsic to sensory cues and the underlying question 
of how the nervous system deals with this uncertainty.

The book is intended as a reference text for graduate students and 
professionals in perceptual psychology, computational neuroscience, 
cognitive neuroscience and sensory neurophysiology.

-- 

Michael S. Landy
New York University
6 Washington Place #961
New York, NY   10003
(212) 998-7857
fax: (212) 995-4349
landy at nyu.edu
http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~msl