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The annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting (CNS) began in 1990 as a small workshop called Analysis and Modeling of Neural Systems. The goal of the workshop was to explore the boundary between neuroscience and computation. Riding on the success of several seminal papers, physicists had made'Neural Networks'fashionable, and soon the quantitative methods used in these abstract model networks started permeating the methods and ideas of experimental neuroscientists. Although experimental neurophysiological approaches provided many advances, it became increasingly evident that mathematical and computational techniques would be required to achieve a comprehensive and quantitative understanding of neural system function. “Computational Neuroscience” emerged to complement experimental neurophysiology. The Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience, published in conjunction with the Organization for Computational Neuroscience, will be an extensive reference work consultable by both researchers and graduate level students. It will be a dynamic, living reference, updatable and containing linkouts and multimedia content whenever relevant.

Over the last two decades, the recognition that astrocytes - the predominant type of cortical glial cells - could sense neighboring neuronal activity and release neuroactive agents, has been instrumental in the uncovering of many roles that these cells could play in brain processing and the storage of information. These findings initiated a conceptual revolution that leads to rethinking how brain communication works since they imply that information travels and is processed not just in the neuronal circuitry but in an expanded neuron-glial network. On the other hand the physiological need for astrocyte signaling in brain information processing and the modes of action of these cells in computational tasks remain largely undefined. This is due, to a large extent, both to the lack of conclusive experimental evidence, and to a substantial lack of a theoretical framework to address modeling and characterization of the many possible astrocyte functions. This book that we propose aims at filling this gap, providing the first systematic computational approach to the complex, wide subject of neuron-glia interactions. The organization of the book is unique insofar as it considers a selection of “hot topics” in glia research that ideally brings together both the novelty of the recent experimental findings in the field and the modelling challenge that they bear. A chapter written by experimentalists, possibly in collaboration with theoreticians, will introduce each topic. The aim of this chapter, that we foresee less technical in its style than in conventional reviews, will be to provide a review as clear as possible, of what is “established” and what remains speculative (i.e. the open questions). Each topic will then be presented in its possible different aspects, by 2-3 chapters by theoreticians. These chapters will be edited in order to provide a “priming” reference for modeling neuron-glia interactions, suitable both for the graduate student and the professional researcher.

In this handbook, renowned scholars from a range of backgrounds provide a state of the art review of key developmental findings in language acquisition. The book places language acquisition phenomena in a richly linguistic and comparative context, highlighting the link between linguistic theory, language development, and theories of learning. The book is divided into six parts. Parts I and II examine the acquisition of phonology and morphology respectively, with chapters covering topics such as phonotactics and syllable structure, prosodic phenomena, compound word formation, and processing continuous speech. Part III moves on to the acquisition of syntax, including argument structure, questions, mood alternations, and possessives. In Part IV, chapters consider semantic aspects of language acquisition, including the expression of genericity, quantification, and scalar implicature. Finally, Parts V and VI look at theories of learning and aspects of atypical language development respectively.