Foundations of computational neuroscience

•Neural systems process information by performing computations.•Neural computation and information processing operate at many levels of organization.•Computational neuroscience is an essential part of the science of cognition.

Most computational neuroscientists assume that nervous systems compute and process information. We discuss foundational issues such as what we mean by 'computation' and 'information processing' in nervous systems; whether computation and information processing are matters of objective fact or of conventional, observer-dependent description; and how computational descriptions and explanations are related to other levels of analysis and organization.