Oxford Handbook of Transcranial Stimulation (Oxford Handbooks) Review

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Oxford Handbook of Transcranial Stimulation (Oxford Handbooks) Reviewgreat informative book covering many aspects of brain function and a science yet to be uncovered or is not well understood.A great future prospect for science and understanding further what the human brain is capable of.Oxford Handbook of Transcranial Stimulation (Oxford Handbooks) OverviewSince becoming commercially available in 1985, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has emerged as an important tool in several areas of neuroscience.Originally envisioned as a way to measure the responsiveness and conduction speed of neurons and synapses in the brain and spinal cord, TMS has also become an important tool for changing the activity of brain neurons and the functions they subserve and as important adjunct to brain imaging and mapping techniques.Along with transcranial electrical stimulation techniques, TMS has diffused far beyond the borders of clinical neurophysiology and into cognitive, perceptual, behavioral, and therapeutic investigation and attracted a highly diverse group of users and would-be users.This book provides an authoritative review of the scientific and technical background required to understand transcranial stimulation techniques and a wide-ranging survey of their burgeoning application in neurophysiology, perception, cognition, emotion, and the clinic.Each of its six sections deals with a major area and is edited by an international authority therein.It will serve researchers, clinicians, students, and others as the definitive text in this area for years to come.

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Oxford Companion to Consciousness Review

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Oxford Companion to Consciousness ReviewThis is a remarkable selection of state-of-the-art, very readable articles on all aspects of the academic study of consciousness. (Thankfully, you will only find serious research here, no esoteric speculation.)
The editors did an excellent job of compiling an impressive list of relevant topics, finding the most prominent authors for the entries and making this book truly interdisciplinary by covering topics from different perspectives and disciplines (i.e., neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, ethology). They have also made sure that the entries are very readable so as to be informative for newcomers to the area and experts alike. Given the breadth of topics and the interdisciplinary nature of the book, this is an extremely valuable resource for students and more senior researchers alike. If you want to know where consciousness research is at today, where it came from, and where it is going, this is THE book for you!
The only complaint I have is the lack of an index, but apart from this technical detail, this is a truly marvelous book, which I highly recommend.Oxford Companion to Consciousness OverviewConsciousness is undoubtedly one of the last remaining scientific mysteries and hence one of the greatest contemporary scientific challenges. How does the brain's activity result in the rich phenomenology that characterizes our waking life? Are animals conscious? Why did consciousness evolve? How does science proceed to answer such questions? Can we define what consciousness is? Can we measure it? Can we use experimental results to further our understanding of disorders of consciousness, such as those seen in schizophrenia, delirium, or altered states of consciousness? These questions are at the heart of contemporary research in the domain. Answering them requires a fundamentally interdisciplinary approach that engages not only philosophers, but also neuroscientists and psychologists in a joint effort to develop novel approaches that reflect both the stunning recent advances in imaging methods as well as the continuing refinement of our concepts of consciousness. In this light, theOxford Companion to Consciousness is the most complete authoritative survey of contemporary research on consciousness. Five years in the making and including over 250 concise entries written by leaders in the field, the volume covers both fundamental knowledge as well as more recent advances in this rapidly changing domain. Structured as an easy-to-use dictionary and extensively cross-referenced, the Companionoffers contributions from philosophy of mind to neuroscience, from experimental psychology to clinical findings, so reflecting the profoundly interdisciplinary nature of the domain. Particular care has been taken to ensure that each of the entries is accessible to the general reader and that the overall volume represents a comprehensive snapshot of the contemporary study of consciousness. The result is a unique compendium that will prove indispensable to anyone interested in consciousness, from beginning students wishing to clarify a concept to professional consciousness researchers looking for the best characterization of a particular phenomenon.

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Synesthesia: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience Review

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Synesthesia: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience ReviewIf you are looking for a general overview of the concept of synesthesia, I would not recommend this book. This book is instead for the serious student or professional who is interested in the field of synesthesia and what research is being done to define and document it. The book primarily consists of highly detailed descriptions the various experiments done on synesthetes (people who experience synesthesia) and the outcomes of those experiments.
Further, the book almost entirely dicsusses grapheme-color synesthesia, or synesthesia experienced by associating numbers and letters with specific colors. Other forms of synesthesia are mentioned, but all of the experiments appear to be related to the above-mentioned version of the experience. Finally, the book is appropriately deadpan, offering only that this and that experiment suggests this and that. There is no emphasis whatsoever on spiritual issues or anything "New Age."
The book is well-organized and articulate, but highly technical while being only mildly conceptual. Most of the experiments mentioned define what synesthesia is *not* rather than what it is. Its most important contribution is the emphasis on describing the machines used to do experiments as well as the non-mechanical experiments (having synesthetes read combinations of numbers on black-and-white or color surfaces, for example) used to define the condition.
The fact that the book does not ultimately define the properties of synesthesia is perfectly understandable considering the limitations of how we can study it at this time. The explanations of how the human brain and mind are defined by scientists are concise and certainly useful for both scientists and philosophers as well as more technically-minded artists. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the study of human perception.Synesthesia: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience OverviewOwing to its bizarre nature and its implications for understanding how brains work, synesthesia has recently received a lot of attention in the popular press and motivated a great deal of research and discussion among scientists. The questions generated by these two communities are intriguing: Does the synesthetic phenomenon require awareness and attention? How does a feature that is not present become bound to one that is? Does synesthesia develop or is it hard wired? Should it change our way of thinking about perceptual experience in general? What is its value in understanding perceptual systems as a whole? This volume brings together a distinguished group of investigators from diverse backgrounds--among them neuroscientists, novelists, and synesthetes themselves--who provide fascinating answers to these questions. Although each approaches synesthesia from a very different perspective, and each was curious about and investigated synesthesia for very different reasons, the similarities between their work cannot be ignored. The research presented in this volume demonstrates that it is no longer reasonable to ask whether or not synesthesia is real--we must now ask how we can account for it from cognitive, neurobiological, developmental, and evolutionary perspectives. This book will be important reading for any scientist interested in brain and mind, not to mention synesthetes themselves, and others who might be wondering what all the fuss is about.

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This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession Review

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This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession ReviewThere are questions that are too big for science; are there gods, for instance, or what is love? And maybe we will never fully find out scientifically why music does what it does and why we care about it so. But for many reasons, music ought to be a profitable subject for scientific enquiry. It is, as Pythagoras knew, an activity strongly rooted in mathematics, and the physics of music is fairly well understood. It is as universal as language; all human cultures have some sort of music, indicating it does something indispensable. And we are increasingly able to figure out, with our sophisticated brain imaging gadgets, what brains do when they hear or think about music. The neuroscience of music is the area of expertise of Daniel J. Levitin, and he writes of it in _This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession_ (Dutton), a fascinating account of current music psychology. Levitin has produced a book wonderfully accessible to lay readers, since although he is an academic (he runs the Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition, and Expertise at McGill University), before he became a scientist, he had been a performing musician, sound engineer, and record producer, working with names like Steely Dan and Blue Oyster Cult. He does pull examples from Bach and Beethoven, but he is obviously more comfortable citing universally-known tunes like "Happy Birthday to You", "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", or "Stairway to Heaven". (Readers whose tastes range in previous epochs will possibly be surprised at the sophistication modern popular musicians have displayed.) Levitin has a good sense of humor and is a genial explainer.
He starts out with a forty page first chapter "What is Music?", which is as good a short explanation of key concepts as tone, scale, fifths, and timbre as anyone could want, and is a fine foundation for all that comes after, a collection of scientific lore and tidbits from all over. For instance, even if you are not a musician, you have a huge store of tunes in your memory. You may not have perfect pitch, the ability to know that an A flat is an A flat as soon as you hear it, but Levitin's own research has provided surprising evidence that your sense of pitch, even if you are not a musician, is really quite good. Subjects who were asked to sing a song from memory got the absolute pitch just right, or very close; they did the same with the song's tempo. There are differences in the brains of musicians and nonmusicians. The corpus callosum, the mass of fibers that connects the right brain hemisphere to the left, is larger in musicians, and is especially larger in those that started music training early. The overall lesson here, though, is that we are all musical, even if we are not musicians, and so non-expert musical brains are really very similar to expert ones. There are descriptions here of surprising research that makes clear how truly ready our brains are to incorporate musical experience. Fetuses in the last three months of gestation, for instance, can hear music within the womb, along with other outside and inside noises. Experiments have shown that if you repeatedly play a song into the womb, and then make sure the child does not hear it again after birth until it is one year old, and then play the music again, the infant will prefer hearing the womb-music rather than completely novel music. This was true whether the experimental music was Vivaldi or the Backstreet Boys.
Levitin certainly has connections; he tells of discussions with Francis Crick about themes in this book, as well as with Joni Mitchell. The final chapter, "The Music Instinct", is a response to cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, who spoke at a 1997 convention of researchers in music perception and cognition. Pinker took the dismissive stance that music was "auditory cheesecake", tickling the parts of the brain that were really for the important functions of language and (unlike language) useless as a force in human evolution. It is not surprising that Levitin and his fellow researchers disagree. Darwin himself felt that musical tones were used in conveying emotion and that those who were able to expend energy in singing or playing were demonstrating biological and sexual fitness. Musical success does make for high numbers of opportunities for spreading one's genes (just ask Mick Jagger). Interest in music peaks in adolescence, indicating a role in sexual selection. Music has been around longer than agriculture, and there is no evidence that language actually preceded music in our species. It may have promoted the cognitive development that was harnessed for speech. Only in the past few hundred years did music become a spectator activity, but in the eons when it could have shaped our social evolution, it was a group activity that may have promoted group togetherness and synchrony. It is an engaging final argument that serves to emphasize the importance of all that the book has presented before, a demonstration that looking at an important human activity in a scientific way only increases our wonder and delight in the activity itself.This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession Overview

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Human Hand Function Review

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Human Hand Function ReviewThis book was an excellent read. Not only did it educate me beyond belief, about the function of the human hand, in terms of tacile and haptic sensory, but also lead me down a path of the history of human development in the anatomny of the hand. I would recommend this book to anyone who appriciates a book of science that could actually change your outlook on the scientific world. Thank you Jones and Lederman.Human Hand Function OverviewHuman Hand Function is a multidisciplinary book that reviews the sensory and motor aspects of normal hand function from both neurophysiological and behavioral perspectives. Lynette Jones and Susan Lederman present hand function as a continuum ranging from activities that are essentially sensory in nature to those that have a strong motor component. They delineate four categories of function along this sensorimotor continuum--tactile sensing, active haptic sensing, prehension, and non-prehensile skilled movements--that they use as a framework for analyzing and synthesizing the results from a broad range of studies that have contributed to our understanding of how the normal human hand functions.The book begins with a historical overview of research on the hand and a discussion of the hand's evolutionary development in terms of anatomical structure. The subsequent chapters review the research in each of the four categories along the continuum, covering topics such as the intensive spatial, temporal, and thermal sensitivity of the hand, the role of hand movements in recognizing common objects, the control of reaching and grasping movements, and the organization of keyboard skills. Jones and Lederman also examine how sensory and motor function develops in the hand from birth to old age, and how the nature of the end effector (e.g., a single finger or the whole hand) that is used to interact with the environment influences the types of information obtained and the tasks performed. The book closes with an assessment of how basic research on the hand has contributed to an array of more applied domains, including communication systems for the blind, haptic interfaces used in teleoperation and virtual-environment applications, tests used to assess hand impairments, and haptic exploration in art. Human Hand Function will be a valuable resource for student and professional researchers in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, engineering, human-technology interaction, and physiology.

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The Handbook of Culture and Psychology Review

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The Handbook of Culture and Psychology ReviewThis book covered a range of issues and a variety of cultures. The fact that it is an edited book contributed to the breadth of the information provided. I used this book as a reference in my study of Multicultural issues in a course I was taking through Fielding Graduate University and found it an invaluable resource. I would encourage anyone who is interested in culture and the psychology of culture to read it and gain a better understanding of the social underpinnings from which we all operate.The Handbook of Culture and Psychology OverviewThis book provides a state of the art review of selected areas and topics in cross-cultural psychology written by eminent figures in the field.Each chapter not only reviews the latest research in its respective area, but also goes further in integrating and synthesizing across areas. The Handbook of Culture and Psychology is a unique and timely contribution that should serve as a valuable reference and guide for beginning researchers and scholars alike.

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The Human Brain: Essentials of Behavioral Neuroscience Review

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The Human Brain: Essentials of Behavioral Neuroscience ReviewThis book possesses all the features one would expect from a textbook on brain anatomy and physiology, with the possible exception of end of chapter activities to promote learning. And with so many concepts and terminology, that would have been a good inclusion.
The loss of a star is due to the lack of some critical information and, perhaps, an unbalanced coverage of information I would expect to find, combined with too few illustrations of complex concepts.
For example, when discussing mood disorders, one of the most prevalent, AD(H)D has been omitted. Also, in the discussion of brain plasticity, no mention is made of Hebb or his famous mnemonic, "neurons that fire together, wire together." Nor does the author even mention critical brain functions such as attention and consciousness.
Especially troubling is the exclusion of information about an exciting and highly significant discovery--"mirror neurons"-- given their impact on behavior and learning. Since the studies that discovered them were reported well before this book was published, timing does not serve as a justification for ommision of this important information.
For a book with "behavioral" in the subtitle, I would expect more physiology and less anatomy and pharmacology. Although some seminal thinkers in neuroscience such as Damasio and LeDoux are mentioned, other notables such as Candace Pert and Jeffrey Schwartz are missing.
The book covers a lot of territory in a generally understandable manner, using good textbook techniques (such as the bolding of newly introduced technical terms), but perhaps too much information, not necessarily of the right kind, or in the best way. For a better understanding of this complex subject, the reader would be advised to add other references such as Rita Carter's highly accesible overview of the brain called, "Mapping the Mind" along with some of the brain coloring books as an aid to learning brain anatomy and physiology.The Human Brain: Essentials of Behavioral Neuroscience OverviewThis book is a conceptually driven and accessible introduction to behavioral neuroscience. Focused, concise and coherent, it reflects integrative trends in the field while making human neuroscience accessible to a wider student audience.Conceptually driven and concise. The field of biological psychology and behavioral neuroscience has grown exponentially in the past decade, and most textbooks have responded by becoming bloated tomes that drown students in unnecessary factoids.Beatty provides just the essentials necessary in a text that is focused, concise, and coherent. A contemporary integrative approach with an emphasis on behavior. Some books in this market focus more on biological mechanisms at the expense of how the biology t

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Neuropsychology of Art: Neurological, Cognitive and Evolutionary Perspectives (Brain, Behaviour and Cognition) Review

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Neuropsychology of Art: Neurological, Cognitive and Evolutionary Perspectives (Brain, Behaviour and Cognition) ReviewIntrigued by the promise of its title, I zipped over to my local university library as soon as this book came in. Alas, this is not only the last word on the topic, it is not even an adequate summary of recent work.
The author is a neuroscientist herself, but the usual penetrating and synthesizing insight of such specialists seems lacking here. In her chapters on musical art and brain damage, I miss the central focus of this kind of study: the scientist learns about brain function from those who have lost a specific piece of it. Zaidel refers to some interesting studies and historical anecdotes (musicians who sustained this or that kind of brain damage), but I the reader do not learn what I want to from the discussions. I learn details, but the stories and studies do not cumulate in a big picture. Of course modern brain research is still developing, yet other researchers give me more of a sense that they can intuit a big picture beyond what they can clearly see.
Also in the music section, Zaidel's end-of-section paragraph of summary does not include major insights derived from Isabelle Peretz, one of the foremost neuroscientists of music, though Zaidel cites a couple of Peretz' publications in her bibliographies. Peretz gives a significantly better explanation of currently understood brain processing of musical phenomena than Zaidel does, but you wouldn't know from this book. It's not a bad book, just not a great one.Neuropsychology of Art: Neurological, Cognitive and Evolutionary Perspectives (Brain, Behaviour and Cognition) OverviewThe significance of art in human existence has long been a source of puzzlement, fascination, and mystery. In Neuropsychology of Art, Dahlia W. Zaidel explores the brain regions and neuronal systems that support artistic creativity, talent, and appreciation.Both the visual and musical arts are discussed against a neurological background. Evidence from the latest relevant brain research is presented and critically examined in an attempt to clarify the brain-art relationship, language processing and visuo-spatial perception. The consequences of perceptual problems in famous artists, along with data from autistic savants and established artists with brain damage as a result of unilateral stroke, dementia, or other neurological conditions, are brought into consideration and the effects of damage to specific regions of the brain explored. A major compilation of rare cases of artists with brain damage is provided and the cognitive abilities required for the neuropsychology of art reviewed.This book draws on interdisciplinary principles from the biology of art, brain evolution, anthropology, and the cinema through to the question of beauty, language, perception, and hemispheric specialization. It will be of interest to advanced students in neuro-psychology, neuroscience and neurology, to clinicians and all researchers and scholars interested in the workings of the human brain.

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Up From Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence Review

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Up From Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence ReviewChampioning the ascent of reptiles as much as the descent of man, this thoughtful volume on the evolution of intelligence by Skoyles and Sagan is a welcome addition to the nature/nurture neurophilosophy shelf. The authors take us well beyond the 'usual suspects' listing of gross anatomical brain structure and function of the familiar phyla, traveling a welcome breadth of comparative data to include a wide variety of species (including our earlier selves). Rather than merely outline the familiar shopping list(s) of evolving structures culminating in the development of the modern human cerebral cortex, Skoyles & Sagan do not end with the discussion of its distinctive "associative" or "silent" areas of the brain of old (as so many other authors are still content to do). Instead, and throughout the book's eighteen chapters, we are treated to a series of detailed proposals concerned with the continuously adaptive neural architecture of both the intra- and inter-cerebral structures underlying the evolution human intelligent behavior.
Reminiscent of learning the names of Tolstoy's characters in the early pages of 'War & Peace', one meets here parts of the brain rarely mentioned (let alone claimed to be of any significance in explaining who we are and why we behave as we do). Following the publication of this volume, the long overdue and normally restricted cast of human brain features will now include the structure and functional connectivities of the anterior cingulate, the amygdala, the insula, the orbital and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the brain (and these are just a few of the characters amongst many others that might have been introduced here). We may still not be able to agree upon how best to measure intelligence (IQ, in my view, still tautologically measuring 'what IQ tests measure'), but the physiological substrates of the brain supporting intelligent behavior are slowly coming to be located and characterized. Many of the examples and theoretical components put forward may perhaps appear predictable to those familiar with modern paradigms in comparative psychology and the study of intelligent systems (both biological and man-made), but the real strength of this book is to be seen in its successfully discussing adaptive neural systems for the technical non-specialist. The story as told here is a great achievement for a book aimed at the popular science reader.
The basic thesis of the book follows the development of the nervous system in the aftermath of the 'KT event' (coincident with the demise of the reptilian dinosaurs), which favored flexible, mobile species with nocturnal, cold-adaptable behaviors, capable of finding shelter and forage. In contrast, species with relatively reflexive nervous systems, whilst satisfactory when situated in a stable, predictable environment, can often fail to adapt to changes within the time course of sudden catastrophic events. En route to the architecture of the modern human brain, we meet the aetiology of social and emotional life and their associated neural substrata in the prefrontal cerebral and limbic cortex (amongst other structures). The level of neuroanatomical detail is sufficient to provide a coherent and consistent story of successive adaptations leading to the development of 'higher intelligence', but the pathway taken argues not for this result deriving solely from phylogenetic mutation (per se), but, and more importantly, from ontogenetic neural plasticity and enculturation despite the SAME genetic makeup.
If this idea is new, and at first glance appears to be an uncomfortable one, don't panic! If the authors are right, your prefrontal brain cortex will soon get to work in generating some reflex inhibition, allowing one to assess (and reassess) the situation, temporarily delay one's actions, and then to organize and activate novel planned behaviors towards worked goals. Whether the modern human can prove him/herself to be intelligent enough to plan the survival of any future catastrophe (whether it be of our own making or another KT-like event) we will have to wait and see. In the meantime we have in this book, an accessible version of a still-emerging story telling how, and as the solution to what challenges, the intelligence of a variety of species (including modern humans) currently evolved to demonstrate.
Excellently referenced throughout, with bibliography aplenty for those wishing to read more of the detailed research literature, my only gripe with this book would be with its lack of visualization aids for those unfamiliar with the brain areas mentioned. Although the text is sufficiently detailed to allow the reader to construct crude schematics for him/herself (as one may have done in the case of Tolstoy's family trees?), both anatomical and flowchart illustrations might be of help in hastening the orientation of those perhaps new to the anatomy and neurophysiology of the brain.
Whether this would indeed have been the book that Carl Sagan would have written in 1977 had he possessed the vast corpus of knowledge concerning the brain now available, one may only guess? It is my own view that Skoyles & Sagan's title serves more than to merely pay homage to 'The Dragons of Eden', in whose memory this book is in part written.Up From Dragons: The Evolution of Human Intelligence Overview
A breathtaking account of the "unnatural" history of consciousness and human intelligence

Taking its cue from The Dragons of Eden, Carl Sagan's 1977 classic and New York Times bestseller, Up from Dragons traces the development of human intelligence back to its animal roots in an attempt to account for the vast differences between our species and all those that came before us. In a book that will spark a storm of debate, neuroscientist John Skoyles and awardwinning author Dorion Sagan introduce a controversial theory of the origins of human intelligence that may hold the answers to questions that have haunted scientists about mind, consciousness, and the evolutionary odyssey of humankind. It also introduces the revolutionary concept of "mindware"­­the human, evolutionary equivalent of computer software­­and describes how the evolution-accelerating symbol-using programs that make it up have empowered us with the unprecedented ability to take charge of our own evolutionary destiny.


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The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Building and Rebuilding the Human Brain Review

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The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Building and Rebuilding the Human Brain ReviewDr. Cozolino has effectively addressed the fragmentation of physiological and psychological approaches to clinical disorders, laying a groundwork for the inevitable meshing of these two broad approaches to dealing with human problems. Increasingly our growing understanding of brain physiology provides opportunities to look for psychological correlates to various brain states. Covering the spectrum of psychological disciplines and relating them to physiological research, he demonstrates cases where a two-pronged therapy makes sense. His book is interspersed with actual case history examples from his practice, and fascinating contemporary neuroscience research. Whereas there is an interesting summary of brain physiology and a broad view of research, the book is clearly written, nicely organized and absorbing in its coverage. Recommended for those who want a view of where treatment of psychopathology is headed, balancing and integrating the psyche and soma.The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Building and Rebuilding the Human Brain Overview
For years, the brain has been viewed as a relatively static entity,determined by the interaction of genetic preprogramming and earlychildhood experience.
In contrast to this view, recent theoretical perspectives and technological advances in brain imaging have revealed that the brain is an organ continually built and re-built by one's experiences. We are now beginning to learn that many forms of psychotherapy, developed in the absence of any scientific understanding of the brain, are supported by neuroscientific findings. Louis Cozolino's The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy illustrates in a clearly written and accessible way how the brain's architecture is related to the problems, passions, and aspirations of human beings. As Cozolino so eloquently argues, all forms of psychotherapy-from psychoanalysis to behavioral interventions-are successful to the extent to which they enhance change in relevant neural circuits.Beginning with an overview of the intersecting fields of neuroscience and psychotherapy, this book delves into the brain's inner workings, from basic neuronal building blocks to complex systems of memory, language, and the organization of experience. It continues by explaining the development and organization of the healthy brain and the unhealthy brain. Common problems such as anxiety, trauma, and codependency are discussed from a scientific and clinical perspective. Cozolino concludes by introducing the emerging paradigm of the psychotherapist-as-neuroscientist and presents some practical applications of neuroscience to psychotherapy. Throughout the book, the science behind the brain's workings is applied to day-to-day experience and clinical practice.Written for psychotherapists and others interested in the relationship between brain and behavior, this book encourages us to consider the brain when attempting to understand human development, mental illness, and psychological health.

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The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain (Mit Press/Bradford Books Series in Cognitive Psychology) Review

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The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain (Mit Press/Bradford Books Series in Cognitive Psychology) ReviewThis author has a good knowledge of his subject. His earlier book is wonderful with insight. This book is a revamp of that material with a summary of some recent research. For my needs the first book is more to my taste.The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain (Mit Press/Bradford Books Series in Cognitive Psychology) OverviewHow did the human brain evolve so that consciousness of art coulddevelop? In The Psychology of Art and the Evolution of the Conscious Brain, RobertSolso describes how a consciousness that evolved for other purposes perceives andcreates art.Drawing on his earlier book Cognition and the Visual Arts and ten yearsof new findings in cognitive research (as well as new ideas in anthropology and arthistory), Solso shows that consciousness developed gradually, with distinctcomponents that evolved over time. One of these components is an adaptiveconsciousness that includes the ability to imagine objects that are not present--anability that allows us to create (and perceive) visual art.Solso describes theneurological, perceptual, and cognitive sequence that occurs when we view art, andthe often inexpressible effect that a work of art has on us. He shows that there aretwo aspects to viewing art: nativistic perception--the synchronicity of eye andbrain that transforms electromagnetic energy into neuro-chemical codes--which is"hard-wired" into the sensory-cognitive system; and directed perception, whichincorporates personal history and knowledge--the entire set of our expectations andpast experiences. Both forms of perception are part of the appreciation of art, andboth are products of the evolution of the conscious brain over hundreds of thousandsof years.Solso also investigates the related issues of neurological and artisticperception of the human face, the effects of visual illusions, and the use ofperspective. The many works of art used as examples are drawn from a wide range ofartistic traditions, from ancient Egypt to Africa and India and the EuropeanRenaissance.

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Infant/Child Mental Health, Early Intervention, and Relationship-Based Therapies: A Neurorelational Framework for Interdisciplinary Practice (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) Review

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Infant/Child Mental Health, Early Intervention, and Relationship-Based Therapies: A Neurorelational Framework for Interdisciplinary Practice (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) ReviewInfant/Child Mental Health, Early Intervention, and Relationship-Based Therapies: A Neurorelational Framework for Interdisciplinary Practice was designed to to be used by a wide range of mental health and educational professionals. Using this overall framework it is possible to view a child's maturation (or lack of such) from a number of different perspectives and can be used by all the concerned disciplines thereby avoiding the current problems of them not being able to view the child as a `whole being.' My feeling is that this approach would revolutionize the way we deal with children who struggle in school. The framework would also be useful when working with adults, since the same work of seeing the `whole person' exists for them as well.

------Pam Fleissig, teacherInfant/Child Mental Health, Early Intervention, and Relationship-Based Therapies: A Neurorelational Framework for Interdisciplinary Practice (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) Overview
A groundbreaking neuroscientific understanding of infant and child development, including a CD-ROM with supplementary worksheets, figures and tables.
When early interventions with children fail, clinicians wonder: How couldthings have been different? The answers seem obvious at first, but a littlereflection begins to unveil just how complicated this question really is. Whoshould have been included in the treatment? With what professionals and usingwhat approaches? When should intervention have occurred? Each questioninvolves a spectrum of both personal and societal issues, which is perhaps whyproblems that are so widely acknowledged remain so widely ignored. Often, afamily is not aware that their story could have had a different ending.So, in response to the critical need for a more cohesive system of care for ouryoungest patients, this book presents a conceptual framework for interdisciplinarycollaboration. Examining the issues of infant mental health and early interventionfrom a brain-based perspective-one that cuts across all domains-addresses the need for individual practitioners to incorporate the whole picturein relation to their part in assessing and intervening with each individual childand parent, and provides a global framework for team collaboration.

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The Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Body Sense (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) Review

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The Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Body Sense (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) ReviewAlan Fogel is that rare combination, a deeply informed scientist and a clear, compassionate writer for the general reader. I bought the book for my adult son who has mild Tourette's, OCD and ADD. But its chapters will illuminate and improve the lives of men, women, and children who suffer from tension, soreness, or general anxiety; or merely provide a good read for anyone with a philosophic interest in body/mind/soul.The Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Body Sense (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) Overview
The practice and science of feeling our movements, sensations, and emotions.
Embodied self-awareness is the practice and science of our ability to feel ourmovements, sensations, and emotions. As infants, before we can speak orconceptualize, we learn to move toward what makes us feel good and awayfrom what makes us feel bad. Our ability to continue to develop and cultivateawareness of such body-based feelings and understanding is essential forlearning how to successfully navigate in the physical and social world, as wellas for avoiding injury and stress. Embodied self-awareness is made possibleby neuromotor and neurohormonal pathways between the brain and the restof the body, pathways that serve the function of using information about bodystate to maintain optimal health and well being. When these pathways becomecompromised, primarily as a result of physical injury or psychological stress andtrauma, we lose our ability to monitor and regulate our basic body functions.This book explains the neurological basis of embodied self-awareness, how toenhance self-awareness, and how to regain it after injury or trauma.

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Matlab for Neuroscientists: An Introduction to Scientific Computing in Matlab Review

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Matlab for Neuroscientists: An Introduction to Scientific Computing in Matlab ReviewI had no previous background in programming or computer science, but based on the reviews I bought this book as an introduction to learning Matlab because it was more specific to the field I'm in. I am REALLY surprised at the reviews that say this book is for beginners. I agree with the previous review that says the book starts off easy to understand, and then it feels like it leaves you on your own to figure out a lot of things.
For example, I was trying to complete the first project on my own and using only the commands covered in the previous chapters. I had to ask for help from friends and despite me telling them "I don't think I'm supposed to use that command because they haven't explained it yet" they still gave me other ways to write certain functions that weren't covered. Since I couldn't figure out how to integrate some of the previous material, I wrote the project program with commands that weren't covered by the book up to that point. It was pretty unsatisfying and discouraging. Not the book's fault that my friends didn't use what was taught, but it does lack some guidance for the projects.
My biggest complaint is that I can't find sample programs for the projects! I've checked the companion website and tried to buy the answer manual online, but you have to prove that you're a professor in order to buy it. Available answers would really help someone like me (who has ZERO intuition for programming) get started on projects and find more efficient ways of writing programs. It's not the advanced math or methods described that make this text hard to get through, which some reviewers are attributing to the bad reviews.
There are lots of comments that accompany the examples, a color insert, and a really helpful appendix that quickly reviews some matrix algebra. This seems like a good book for someone in neuroscience or psychology who already has some background in Matlab. But if you're just starting out, especially without any background in programming, this book will likely discourage you. Also, I could see how this book would be good for a beginning course because you've got a professor to guide you through the text. However, I'd recommend David Rosenbaum's "Matlab for Behavioral Scientists" for a beginning text if you're teaching yourself. After reading that book, I've looked back at this book and can understand everything much better.
Matlab for Neuroscientists: An Introduction to Scientific Computing in Matlab OverviewMatlab is the accepted standard for scientific computing, used globally in virtually all Neuroscience and Cognitive Psychology laboratories. For instance, SPM, the most used software for the analysis and manipulation of fMRI images in research and clinical practice is fully programmed in matlab, and its use of the possibility to allow for sophisticated software modules to be freely added to the software has established it as the by far dominant software in the field. Many universities now offer, or are beginning to offer matlab introductory courses in their neuroscience and psychology programs. Nevertheless, so far there hasn't been a textbook specific to this market, and the use of the plethora of existing engineering focused Matlab textbooks is notoriously difficult for teaching the package in those environments.This is the first comprehensive teaching resource and textbook for the teaching of Matlab in the Neurosciences and in Psychology.Matlab is unique in that it can be used to learn the entire empirical and experimental process, including stimulus generation, experimental control, data collection, data analysis and modeling.Thus a wide variety of computational problems can be addressed in a single programming environment.The idea is to empower advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students by allowing them to design and implement their own analytical tools. As students advance in their research careers, they will have achieved the fluency required to understand and adapt more specialized tools as opposed to treating them as "black boxes".Virtually all computational approaches in the book are covered by using genuine experimental data that are either collected as part of the lab project or were collected in the labs of the authors, providing the casual student with the look and feel of real data. In some rare cases, published data from classical papers are used to illustrate important concepts, giving students a computational understanding of critically important research. The ability to effectively use computers in research is necessary in an academic environment that is increasingly focused on quantitative issues.Matlab represents an ideal language of scientific computing. It is based on powerful linear algebra structures which lend themselves to empirical problems on the one hand, while at the same time allowing the student to make rapid problem-oriented progress (particularly in terms of visualization of data points) without having to lose focus by worrying too much about memory allocation and other "plumbing" minutiae as would be required in other, more low-level programming languages such as C or C++. Currently, there are several books that provide introductions to Matlab that are either too generic and fundamental or too irrelevant for neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists who typically face a very circumscribed range of problems in data collection, data analysis and signal processing. Some non-book tutorials and primers that are in use in the community are typically out of date. Matlab versions are usually not backwards compatible. Many commands and functions used in older tutorials and primers, such as "flops" won't work in current versions of Matlab, necessitating a book that is timely and up-to-date.The complete lack of a relevant resource in this area, combined with a clearly felt need for such a text provided the primary and initial impetus for this project. The authors provide such a dearly needed resource adapting and pooling materials that developed for and used in highly rated courses involving the use of Matlab in Neuroscience at the University of Chicago.Two co-authors (PW and NH) have presented their respective work on teaching Matlab at national meetings and two of the co-authors (PW and MB) were awarded the coveted University of Chicago's Booth Prize for excellence in teaching these courses. (http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/070524/boothprize.shtml ).* The first comprehensive textbook on Matlab with a focus for its application in Neuroscience* Problem based educational approach with many examples from neuroscience and cognitive psychology using real data* Authors are award winning educators with strong teaching experience* Instructor's Website with figurebank, additional problems and examples, solutions, etc

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Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness, Second Edition: Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience Review

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Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness, Second Edition: Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience ReviewI have been teaching "Mind, Brain and Behavior", and introductory course in Cognitive Neuroscience, for the past 10 years to college students at Columbia University and the City University of New York. After using Gazzaniga, Ivry and Mangun's "Cognitive Neuroscience: Biology of the Mind" for 8 of those years, I decided to try the Baars text because it appeared to have a strong overarching theme that would provide for greater pedagogy than my previous text. Indeed, skimming the text and the chapters suggests that it would be a beautiful, up-to-date and well-integrated treatment of cognitive neuroscience, with an emphasis on consciousness that is aligned with my own interests. So I assigned it to my class of 100.
I should have read it more carefully before doing that. In fact, I spent the semester trying to help them figure out what the figures really meant (since they didn't actually match what was discussed in the text much of the time), clarify concepts that came out of the blue, and generally apologizing to the students for all the clerical errors. It was frustrating for them and for me. Many of them wanted their money back from the publisher.
For students who are trying to learn new material, poor editing is particularly damaging because it creates unnecessary confusion (on top of the necessary confusion that comes with approaching challenging material). Even experts or interested laypeople shouldn't have to struggle through such poor editing in order to get information.
Needless to say, I'm not using the Baars text anymore. Hopefully, the 2nd edition will be better edited. I don't think it could be worse - in fact I've never read anything that was so poorly executed.
One positive note: I would say that the powerpoint slides that came with the instructor's version of the text were actually more useful than most instructor materials. Also, it has a cool bookmark.Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness, Second Edition: Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience Overview
This is the fully revised and updated second edition of the very sucessful introductory textbook on cognitive neuroscience. Written by two leading experts in the field, thisbook takes a unique thematic approach to introduce concepts of cognitive neurosciences, guiding students along a clear path to understand the latest findings whether or not they have a background in neuroscience. New to this edition are Frontiers in Cognitive Neuroscience text boxes; each one focuses on a leading researcher and their topic of expertise. There is a new chapter on Genes and Molecules of Cognition, and all other chapters have been thoroughly revised, based on the most recent discoveries.

New edition of a very successful textbook
Completely revisedto reflect new advances, and feedback from adopters and students
Includes a new chapter on Genes and Molecules of Cognition
Student Solutions available at http://www.baars-gage.com/

For Teachers:


Rapid adoption and course preparation: A wide array of instructor support materials are available online including PowerPoint lecture slides, a test bank with answers, and eFlashcords on key concepts for each chapter.
A textbook with an easy-to-understand thematic approach: in a way that is clear for students from a variety of academic backgrounds, the text introduces concepts such as working memory, selective attention, and social cognition.
A step-by-step guide for introducing students to brain anatomy: color graphics have been carefully selected to illustrate all points and the research explained. Beautifully clear artist's drawings are used to 'build a brain' from top to bottom, simplifying the layout of the brain.

For students:


An easy-to-read, complete introduction to mind-brain science: all chapters begin from mind-brain functions and build a coherent picture of their brain basis. A single, widely accepted functional framework is used to capture the major phenomena.
Learning Aids include a student support site with study guides and exercises, a new Mini-Atlas of the Brain and a full Glossary of technical terms and their definitions.
Richly illustrated with hundreds of carefully selected color graphics to enhance understanding.


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Introduction to Neuropsychology, Second Edition Review

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Introduction to Neuropsychology, Second Edition ReviewThe only thing harder than brain surgery is mastering it without cutting the head open. "Introduction to Neurospsychology" is what it says it is - a scholarly introduction to science of neuropsychology. With a scientific dissection of the human brain and why it affects humanity the way it does, it's an explanation that will move those learning about the field far in their knowledge. Now in a newly expanded and updated second edition covering well more than two decades of brain science, "Introduction to Neuropsychology" is a must for any college library reference or psychology collection.Introduction to Neuropsychology, Second Edition OverviewThis outstanding text gives students a solid grounding in clinical and experimental neuropsychology. The author is a leading authority whose engaging writing style and thorough yet concise coverage of brain localization, anatomy, and their links to cognitive function make the book ideal for undergraduate or graduate use. It is illustrated with more than 60 figures, including six color plates.


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Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others Review

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Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others ReviewThis book tells you a great deal about the people who study mirror neurons. You will learn, for example that Vittorio Gallese is one of twenty-seven members of an exclusive club in Parma in which each member personifies one of Giuseppi Verdi's twenty-seven operas. You will learn that in July 2006 Italy won the World Cup of soccer by defeating France on penalty kicks following a 1-1 tie. You will learn that the author's daughter, Caterina, is in the six grade, is studying ballet, and practices en pointe in the living room. You will learn that UCLA has a Chancellor's Fund for Academic Border Crossing specifically designed for interdisciplinary projects involving two professors from different disciplines mentoring a graduate student who wants to perform interdisciplinary work. If all this sounds fascinating, you will not be disappointed. If, on the other hand, you hoped to learn such things as to how the behavior of mirror neurons is consistent with neural network models, you may be disappointed. The author has a penchant for attributing human attributes to neurons and their workings (perhaps he never heard the admonition, "Don't anthropomorphize neurons; they hate it when you do that"); I found his blending of psychology and neuroscience disconcerting. The authors of the blurbs on the cover of the book clearly found a treasure trove that I somehow missed. I hope you will find similar treasures if you chose to read the book.Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others Overview

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Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought (Bradford Books) Review

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Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought (Bradford Books) ReviewThe model (theory) of the world that an intelligence will form
depends upon the particular representation used by the learner.
(Machine Learning, Tom Mitchell, McGraw Hill, 1997, pgs 65-66)
While this is rigorously true for the learner's INTERNAL
representation (i.e. the language of thought) it will also
apply to NATURAL languages that the agent employs to the
degree that reasoning is performed in the natural language
and/or to the degree to which the natural language mirrors
the language of thought. This dependence of the learner's
understanding of the world on his language may help to
explain why translation between natural languages is so
difficult. Gentner and Goldin-Meadow's book does a good
job of discussing current research in this area.Language in Mind: Advances in the Study of Language and Thought (Bradford Books) OverviewThe idea that the language we speak influences the way we think has evoked perennial fascination and intense controversy. According to the strong version of this hypothesis, called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis after the American linguists who propounded it, languages vary in their semantic partitioning of the world, and the structure of one's language influences how one understands the world. Thus speakers of different languages perceive the world differently.Although the last two decades have been marked by extreme skepticism concerning the possible effects of language on thought, recent theoretical and methodological advances in cognitive science have given the question new life. Research in linguistics and linguistic anthropology has revealed striking differences in cross-linguistic semantic patterns, and cognitive psychology has developed subtle techniques for studying how people represent and remember experience. It is now possible to test predictions about how a given language influences the thinking of its speakers.Language in Mind includes contributions from both skeptics and believers and from a range of fields. It contains work in cognitive psychology, cognitive development, linguistics, anthropology, and animal cognition. The topics discussed include space, number, motion, gender, theory of mind, thematic roles, and the ontological distinction between objects and substances. The contributors include Melissa Bowerman, Eve Clark, Jill de Villiers, Peter de Villiers, Giyoo Hatano, Stan Kuczaj, Barbara Landau, Stephen Levinson, John Lucy, Barbara Malt, Dan Slobin, Steven Sloman, Elizabeth Spelke, and Michael Tomasello.

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Views into the Chinese Room: New Essays on Searle and Artificial Intelligence Review

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Views into the Chinese Room: New Essays on Searle and Artificial Intelligence ReviewThe Chinese Room Argument (CRA) has nothing to do with the speed of computers or any future developments in artifical intelligence (at least as understood as following from Turing). The CRA is a purely formal argument intended to refute the claim that computers (defined as Turing machines) can think, or can understand, or are minds solely by virtue of their formal description. (This claim is the essence of "computationalism," after Turing's original formulation.) The CRA is that: 1) Syntax is not semantics. 2) The implemented synatactical or formal program of a computer is not sufficient to generate semantics. 3) Minds have semantics. 4) Therefore, computers (so defined) are not minds/cannot think/do not understand because they are not sufficient to generate semantics.
For example, the concepts we employ to think and the words we use to speak have meanings. But there is nothing in computationalism as syntax that has any meaning whatsoever. Whatever meaning an implemented formal program has results from its being programmed or interpreted by us. Syntax (e.g., a computer program) has no causal powers. Whatever causal powers computers have (e.g., to fly airplanes) results from our programming and our assigning interpretations to the electrical charge insides a chip, not from the program in itself.
The chapters in Views Into the Chinese Room attack different aspects of the CRA. But they address it as an argument that stands or falls on the truth of the premises and the validity of the inference, not on engineering questions such as the speed of computers, which are irrelevant. Searle believes that there are, in fact, thinking machines -- we human beings are biological machines that think. And he believes that there also could be artificially made machines that think. The CRA is meant to show only that an implemented computer program by itself cannot generate mental content or semantic content.
For a clear explanation of the CRA, see chapter 15 of this book, by Stevan Harnad, the editor of The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, where Searle's original paper appeared twenty years ago. Do not rely on reviewers who do not understand the argument in the first place.Views into the Chinese Room: New Essays on Searle and Artificial Intelligence OverviewThe most famous challenge to computational cognitive science and artificial intelligence is the philosopher John Searle's "Chinese Room" argument. Searle argued that, although machines can be devised to respond to input with the same output as would a mind, machines--unlike minds--lack understanding of the symbols they process. 19 essays by leading scientists and philosophers assess, renew, and respond to his challenge.

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Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique Review

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Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique ReviewTo understand human social behavior it is necessary to be familiar with most (if not all) of the material Michael Gazzaniga covers in this seminal summary of how humans are alike and different from other animals. Since Dr. Gazzaniga is not only a pioneering neuroscientist, but also an accomplished writer noted for his ability to render scientific material understandable and entertaining, there is likely no better way to become familiar with leading edge thinking on human behavior than by reading "Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique."
Dr. Gazzaniga's stance (as proclaimed in the Prologue) is that although most human activity can be related to antecedents in other animals, somewhere in the evolution of our brain the equivalent of a "phase shift" occurred and we became unique: His rallying cry is "... let us start the journey of understanding why humans are special, and let's have some fun doing it." "Human" succeeds in doing that throughout its nine chapters.
All of the recent discoveries and salient theories from the fields of neuroscience, molecular biology, genetics, evolutionary and cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence (among others) are presented in a cogent and evenhanded way; whenever Dr. Gazzaniga favors one theory over another, he carefully explains why, and the result is that readers can weigh the data and various viewpoints themselves to improve their comprehension of human behavior.
The final chapter looks into the near future and considers likely advances in the emerging neuroprosthetic fields, where brain signals are tapped to control prosthetic devices; in robotics and artificial intelligence, where manmade devices take over Man's "dull, dangerous, or dirty" chores; and in gene therapy and "genetic engineering," where the Pandora's Box of manipulating our very nature may be creaking open. Dr. Gazzaniga's extensive work with the Council on Bioethics (which led to a previous book, "The Ethical Brain") makes him almost uniquely qualified to address the promises and dangers of gene manipulation.
And, yes, a summary can indeed be "seminal" if it brings together findings from many disciplines, lays them out in parallel, and shows how they have a common thread and converge toward a common conclusion.
Adam Leonard (Author of "Man by Nature: The Hidden Programming Controlling Human Behavior.")
Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique Overview

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