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Reading List

This page lists a number of books that I have found worthwhile for background reading in connectionism, neuroscience, etc. If you have any comments, please send me mail.

Connectionism

Rumelhart, David E., McClelland, James L., and the PDP Research Group. Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, 2 vols.: Vol. I: "Foundations," Vol. II: "Psychological and Biological Models." MIT Press, 1986. Available in paperback. A lightly edited collection of seminal papers from the 80s by many of the pioneers of the neural net revival. The advantage of these books over many newer neural net books is that they are written from a cognitive science perspective, so they give a better explanation of why connectionist approaches are valuable. For an introduction to connectionist approaches to AI and cognitive science (or other applications of neural nets), I recommend reading chapters 1-5 of Vol. I. That is a good start. Anyone serious about connectionism should read all of both volumes.

McClelland, James L., and Rumelhart, David E. Explorations in Parallel Distributed Processing, MIT Press, 198X. Known informally as "volume III" of the PDP books, this is a practical workbook to complement the theory of the first two volumes. I often recommend this book to people who want to get some hands-on experience with neural nets. Most of the chapters correspond to key experiments discussed in the PDP volumes, so the student can replicate these experiments and try extensions. The book exists in two versions, one of the Mac and one for the PC. Both versions come with C source code and Make files for installation on Unix. Since the book+software costs less than $40, it is a remarkable value. This PDP software is installed on CS department computers, as will be the newer, enhanced C++ version of the software.
Anderson, James A., & Rosenfeld, Edward. Neurocomputing: Foundations of Research, MIT Press, 1988. Available in paperback. A collection of 43 fundamental papers in connectionism, "from Hebb to Hopfield." Anyone intending to do research in connectionism or neural networks should plan on eventually reading all of this book. A second volume is also available, with the second tier of important papers.
Hinton, Geoffrey E., & Anderson, James A. Parallel Models of Associative Memory, updated ed., Lawrence Erlbaum, 1989. Available in paperback. Originally published in 1979, this is a classic collection of papers, from the early days of the neural net revival, by Rumelhart, Anderson, Hinton, Feldman, Kohonen, Sejnowski, Geman and others.

Neuroscience

Shepherd, Gordon M. Neurobiology, 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 1994. A good, authoritative, readable to all of neuroscience from the cell level to higher cognition. Available in paperback. There are many other good neuroscience texts, but this one is widely cited.
Gazzaniga, Michael S. (ed) The Cognitive Neurosciences, MIT Press, 1993. This collections of articles gives up-to-date information on the neural mechanisms underlying most cognitive processes, from development and learning, through the sensory and motor systems, to attention, memory, language, imager, emotion and consciousness. A good reference for finding out what is currently known. Over 1400 pages.

Cognitive Science

Artificial Neural Nets

The trouble with most neural net books written from an engineering orientation is that they do not explain why one would want to use neural nets rather than conventional AI methods, or what their distinctive advantages are. Also, many engineering-oriented books do not treat the theory adequately, which is necessary for intelligent use of neural nets (or almost any other sophisticated tool). Nevertheless, I think the following are worthwhile:

Kroese, Ben J. A., and van der Smagt, P. Patrick. An Introduction to Neural Networks. Both the latest version and older versions are available. This is a very comprehensive introduction to neural nets, which does not slight the theory. Amazingly, it's absolutely free! It is also updated on a regular basis.
Hertz, John, Krogh, Anders, & Palmer, Richard G. Introduction to the Theory of Neural Computation, Addison-Wesley, 1991. Paperback. A good introduction to the principal varieties of neural networks that does not slight the theory.

Writing Theses, Articles, Books, etc.

Strunk and White

The perennial, concise (71 pp.) classic is Strunk and White's Elements of Style (Macmillan, 1959), available in all libraries and bookstores. (You should own a copy or two.) You can read it in an evening, and everyone should plan on rereading it every few years to keep their writing style from drifting away from clarity. The first edition (by Strunk alone) is available on line.

Van Leunen's Handbook for Scholars

Mary-Claire van Leunen's Handbook for Scholars (rev. ed., Oxford U.P., 1992) gives rational, up-to-date answers to many of the gnarly writing problems facing scholars. I do not agree with all her opinions, but you will not go far wrong by following her advice. The book is in print and generally available in college bookstores.

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Last update: Tue Jan 4 16:53:37 EST 2000