How do sensory neurons transmit information about environmental stimuli to the central nervous system? How do networks of neurons in the CNS decode that information, thus leading to perception and consciousness? These questions are among the oldest in neuroscience. Quite recently, new approaches to exploration of these questions have arisen, often from interdisciplinary approaches combining traditional computational neuroscience with dynamical systems theory, including nonlinear dynamics and stochastic processes. In this volume in two sections a selection of contributions about these topics from a collection of well-known authors is presented. One section focuses on computational aspects from single neurons to networks with a major emphasis on the latter. The second section highlights some insights that have recently developed out of the nonlinear systems approach.