TIMING OF BEHAVIOR: NEURAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL, AND COMPUTATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

David A. Rosenbaum and Charles E. Collyer, Editors,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998
ISBN 0-262-18166-6 (384 pp., $57.00, hardcover)

Part I. Neural Perspectives

  1. Predictive timing under temporal uncertainty: The time-derivative model of the conditioned response
    John W. Moore, June-Seek Choi, and Darlene H. Brunzell

  2. Sequencing and timing operations of the basal ganglia
    Deborah L. Harrington and Kathleen Y. Haaland

  3. Interresponse intervals in continuation tapping
    Charles E. Collyer and Russell M. Church

  4. Touching surfaces for control, not support
    John J. Jeka

Part II. Psychological Perspectives

  1. The perception of segmentation in sequences: Local information provides the building blocks for global structure
    Steven M. Boker and Michael Kubovy

  2. Musical motion in perception and performance
    Bruno H. Repp

  3. Concurrent processing during sequenced finger tapping
    Heather Jane Barnes

  4. Memory mixing in duration bisection
    Trevor B. Penney, Lorraine G. Allan, Warren H. Meck, and John Gibbon

  5. The regulation of contact in rhythmic tapping
    Jonathan Vaughan, Tiffany R. Mattson, and David A. Rosenbaum

Part III. Computational Perspectives

  1. Broadcast theory of timing
    David A. Rosenbaum

  2. Dynamics of human intersegmental coordination: Theory and research
    Polemnia G. Amazeen, Eric L. Amazeen, and Michael T. Turvey

  3. Constraints in the emergence of preferred locomotory patterns
    Kenneth G. Holt

  4. A dynamical model of the coupling between posture and gait
    Bruce A. Kay and William H. Warren, Jr.

  5. Dynamics of human gait transitions
    Frederick J. Diedrich and William H. Warren, Jr.

  6. A computational model for repetitive motion
    Kjeldy Haugsjaa, Kamal Souccar, Christopher Connolly, and Roderic A. Grupen

(From the editors' Preface)

      All of us marvel at the skills of athletes and musicians as they demonstrate the levels to which humans can ascend in the timing of behavior. These feats illustrate a broader range of capabilities shown in everyday life, however. Picking up a cup and bringing it to one's lips, opening a door for an elderly friend, tapping one's foot in time with music all reveal how we temporally organize our behavior. In cases where there is damage to the nervous system, the ability to time behavior can break down, and we become aware, sometimes painfully so, of the many things that must go right for timing not to go crazily wrong.

      This volume assembles research from several teams of investigators who have studied the timing of behavior from different perspectives -- the neural perspective , the psychological perspective, and the computational perspective. All of these perspectives are equally important, in our judgment. Viewing timing only from a neural perspective leaves out the psychological functions being served and the computations being performed. Viewing timing from a purely psychological perspective omits the biological substrates that make behavior possible and excludes the abstract or formal properties being evinced behaviorally. Finally, viewing timing from a purely computational perspective leaves out the richness of actual behavior, the complexity of neural machinery, and the impact that behavioral and neural constraints can have on the computations. To show the rich interconnections among all these approaches, we have assembled in one place works representing all three traditions.

      With the "changing of the guard" after the fifth NEST meeting, it occurred to the new and outgoing organizer that it might be useful to invite speakers from the first five meetings to write up their work for publication in a single volume that would represent, in effect, "the Best of NEST."


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