Edited by Frederick R. Prete A Bradford Book, The MIT Press(2004) 464pp. ISBN 0-262-66174-8 $40.00/£25.95 (pbk)
At a time when neuroscience - again - searches for the seat of the soul,now fashionably called consciousness, it needs reminding that we are still unable to explain, in terms of signal and information processing, how a bee works, or an octopus. Complex Worlds from Simpler Nervous Systemssets out to do just that: to document, with a series of well-told stories, how versatile, robust, flexible and complex `lowly' animals (i.e. insects,spiders, crustaceans, cephalopods and amphibians) are, when considered as information processing entities. The stories are told from different perspectives, either trying to gain insight into the perceptual world of animals by analysing their seemingly `cognitive' behaviour and the natural conditions in which they have to operate, or by studying the stunning arrays of sophisticated sensors they have evolved to cope with their diverse`information...
