'This book can catapult you into living fully the life that is yours to live while you have the chance' Jon Kabat-Zinn 'A must-read for our distracted times' Dan Goleman 'A must-have guide to experiencing every moment of our lives' Goldie Hawn 'A treasure trove of insights and exercises to enrich our lives' Dan Siegel Stop for a moment. Are you here right now? Is your focus on the words in front of you? Or is it roaming elsewhere, to the past or future, to a worry, to your to-do list, or to your phone? The good news: There's nothing wrong with you - your brain isn't broken. The human brain was built to be distractible. The even better news: You can train your brain to pay attention more effectively. Acclaimed neuroscientist Dr Amishi Jha has dedicated her life's work to understanding the science of attention at every level - from brain imaging studies in the lab to field testing soldiers, firefighters and athletes. Her mission has been to scientifically determine how we can harness the full power of our attention to better meet all that life demands. In Peak Mind, Dr Jha expertly guides readers through fascinating research, debunking common assumptions about focus and attention, and offers remarkably easy-to-adapt flexible twelve minute-a-day exercises to lift the mental fog, declutter the mind, and strengthen focus so that you can experience more of your life.

Groping around a familiar room in the dark, or learning to read again after a traumatic brain injury; navigating a virtual landscape through an avatar, or envisioning a scene through the eyes of a character-all of these are expressions of one fundamental property of life, Alain Berthoz argues. They are instances of vicariance, when the brain sidesteps an impasse by substituting one process or function for another. In The Vicarious Brain, Creator of Worlds, Berthoz shows that this capacity is the foundation of the human ability to think creatively and function in a complex world. Vicariance is often associated with proxies and delegates, but it also refers to a biological process in which a healthy organ takes over for a defective counterpart. Berthoz, a neuroscientist, approaches vicariance through neuronal networks, asking how, for example, a blind person can develop a heightened sense of touch. He also describes how our brains model physical reality and how we use these models to understand things that are foreign to us. Forging across disciplinary boundaries, he explores notions of the vicarious in paleontology, ethology, art, literature, and psychology. Through an absorbing examination of numerous facets of vicariance, Berthoz reveals its impact on an individual's daily decision making and, more broadly, on the brain's creation of worlds. As our personal and social lives are transformed by virtual realities, it is more crucial than ever before that we understand vicariance within our increasingly complex environment, and as an aspect of our own multiplying identities.

Acclaimed neuroscientist Gary Wenk reveals the fascinating impacts of exercise on the brain Decades of research demonstrate that regular modest levels of exercise improve heart and lung function and may relieve joint pain. Regular daily exercise will help your body to regulate blood sugar levels and reduce inflammation, and many of these benefits are a consequence of reducing the amount of body fat you carry around. Your body clearly benefits in many ways from regular exercise. Does your brain benefit as well? Does regular exercise positively affect brain function? Does our thinking become faster because we exercise? Does running a marathon make us smarter? Dr. Gary Wenk's goal is to provide a realistic perspective on what benefits your brain should expect to achieve from exercise. Your Brain on Exercise skillfully blends scholarship with illuminating insights and clarity. Without requiring any specialized knowledge about the brain, Your Brain on Exercise entertainingly illustrates the intersection between brain health, the consequences of exercise, and our need to eat in an entirely new light. An internationally renowned neuroscientist and medical researcher, Dr. Wenk has been educating college and medical students about the brain and lecturing around the world for more than forty years.

This collected volume presents radically new directions which are emerging in cognitive lexical semantics research. A number of papers re-ignite the polysemy vs. monosemy debate, and testify to the fact that polysemy is no longer simply taken for granted, but is currently a much more contested issue than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. Other papers offer fresh perspectives on the prototype structure of lexical categories, while generally accepted notions about the radial network structure of categories are questioned in papers on the development of word meaning in child language acquisition and in diachrony. Additional topics include the interaction of lexical and constructional meaning, and the relationship between word meanings and the contexts in which the words are encountered. This book is of interest to semanticists and cognitive linguists, as well as to scholars working in the broader field of cognitive science.

Neuroscientific evidence has educated us in the ways in which the brain mediates our thought and behavior and, therefore, forced us to critically examine how we conceive of free will. This volume, featuring contributions from an international and interdisciplinary group of distinguished researchers and scholars, explores how our increasing knowledge of the brain can elucidate the concept of the will and whether or to what extent it is free. It also examines how brain science can inform our normative judgments of moral and criminal responsibility for our actions. Some chapters point out the different respects in which mental disorders can compromise the will and others show how different forms of neuromodulation can reveal the neural underpinning of the mental capacities associated with the will and can restore or enhance them when they are impaired.

This open access volume reveals the hidden power of the script we read in and how it shapes and drives our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures. Expanding on the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (i.e., the idea that language affects the way we think), this volume proposes the "Script Relativity Hypothesis" (i.e., the idea that the script in which we read affects the way we think) by offering a unique perspective on the effect of script (alphabets, morphosyllabaries, or multi-scripts) on our attention, perception, and problem-solving. Once we become literate, fundamental changes occur in our brain circuitry to accommodate the new demand for resources. The powerful effects of literacy have been demonstrated by research on literate versus illiterate individuals, as well as cross-scriptal transfer, indicating that literate brain networks function differently, depending on the script being read. This book identifies the locus of differences between the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, and between the East and the West, as the neural underpinnings of literacy. To support the "Script Relativity Hypothesis", it reviews a vast corpus of empirical studies, including anthropological accounts of human civilization, social psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, applied linguistics, second language studies, and cross-cultural communication. It also discusses the impact of reading from screens in the digital age, as well as the impact of bi-script or multi-script use, which is a growing trend around the globe. As a result, our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures are now growing closer together, not farther apart.

National panics about crime, immigrants, police, and societal degradation have been pervasive in the United States of the 21st century. Many of these fears begin as mere phantom fears, but are systematically amplified by social media, news media, bad actors and even well-intentioned activists. There are numerous challenges facing the U.S., but Americans must sort through which fears are legitimate threats and which are amplified exaggerations. This book examines the role of fear in national panics and addresses why many Americans believe the country is in horrible shape and will continue to deteriorate (despite contradictory evidence). Political polarization, racism, sexism, economic inequality, and other social issues are examined. Combining media literacy, folklore, investigative journalism, psychology, neuroscience, and critical thinking approaches, this book reveals the powerful role that fear plays in clouding perceptions about the U.S. It not only records the repercussions of this toxic phenomenon, but also offers evidence-based solutions.

As her mother slips into the fog of dementia, a philosopher grapples with the unbreakable links between our bodies and our sense of self. Vanessa wakes from a coma having forgotten ten years of her life. Toussaint, is haunted by voices. Thomas no longer knows how to answer questions and Claire, a retired teacher loses the use of her right hand because of an inexplicable pain. Noga Arikha began studying these patients and their confounding symptoms in order to explore how our physical experiences inform our identities. Soon after she began her work, the question took on unexpected urgency, as Arikha's own mother began to show signs of Alzheimer's disease. Weaving together stories of her subjects' troubles and her mother's decline, Arikha searches for some meaning in the science she has set out to study. She explores how the self studies itself and how it loses itself, delving into the scientific research that can help us understand how deeply interconnected are our minds and bodies. The result is an unforgettable journey across the ever-shifting boundaries between ourselves and each other.

In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that discovered vaccines for Covid-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, quack cures and conspiracy theorizing?

In Rationality, Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are simply an irrational species - cavemen out of time fatally cursed with biases, fallacies and illusions. After all, we discovered the laws of nature, lengthened and enriched our lives and set the benchmarks for rationality itself. Instead, he explains, we think in ways that suit the low-tech contexts in which we spend most of our lives, but fail to take advantage of the powerful tools of reasoning we have built up over millennia: logic, critical thinking, probability, causal inference, and decision-making under uncertainty. These tools are not a standard part of our educational curricula, and have never been presented clearly and entertainingly in a single book - until now.

Rationality matters. It leads to better choices in our lives and in the public sphere, and is the ultimate driver of social justice and moral progress. Brimming with insight and humour, Rationality will enlighten, inspire and empower.

Toward a Holistic Intelligence: Life on the Other Side of the Digital Barrier is a critical examination of how the Internet, our current digital age, and people's continuous use of digital devices is adversely affecting their thought processes, working memories, attention spans, and overall level of intelligence. In doing so, it explores how a larger intelligence based primarily on direct insight and creative absorption, qualities which are integrally part of people's emotive and sensorial lives, might allow for a clearer exploration of their world and themselves at a time in which our cognitive lives are being so thoroughly abrogated by the Internet and its resultant technologies.

Toward a Holistic Intelligence: Life on the Other Side of the Digital Barrier is a critical examination of how the Internet, our current digital age, and people's continuous use of digital devices is adversely affecting their thought processes, working memories, attention spans, and overall level of intelligence. In doing so, it explores how a larger intelligence based primarily on direct insight and creative absorption, qualities which are integrally part of people's emotive and sensorial lives, might allow for a clearer exploration of their world and themselves at a time in which our cognitive lives are being so thoroughly abrogated by the Internet and its resultant technologies.

The aim of the volume is to show in which sense the study of culture, literature and the arts can contribute to a better understanding of human cognition. The collection of essays is questioning whether culture is exclusively human and discusses evolutionary substrates of narrative and the interfaces between culture, stories and cognition. The contributions examine the cognitive strengths and weaknesses of literary reading and analyse other techniques of sense-making in the arts through imagined dialogues and the experience of ambiguity. The final contributions are dealing with musical cognition, the relation between music, aesthetics and cognition.

One of the most exciting theories to emerge from cognitive science research over the past few decades has been Douglas Hofstadter's notion of "strange loops," from Goedel, Escher, Bach (1979). Hofstadter is also an active literary translator who has written about translation, perhaps most notably in his 1997 book Le Ton Beau de Marot, where he draws on his cognitive science research. And yet he has never considered the possibility that translation might itself be a strange loop. In this book Douglas Robinson puts Hofstadter's strange-loops theory into dialogue with a series of definitive theories of translation, in the process showing just how cognitively and affectively complex an activity translation actually is.

This unique book on neurocognitive interpretations of Australian literature covers a wide range of analyses by discussing Australian Literary Studies, Aboriginal literary texts, women writers, ethnic writing, bestsellers, neurodivergence fiction, emerging as well as high- profile writers, literary hoaxes and controversies, book culture, and LGBTIQA+ authors, to name a few. It eclectically brings together a wide gamut of cognitive concepts and literary genres at the intersection of Australian literary studies and cognitive literary studies in the first single-author volume of its kind. It takes Australian Literary Studies into the age of neuroawareness and provides new pathways in contemporary criticism.

This book presents a proposal to better define thematic relations by exploring the relation between language and cognition. It analyzes the relation between grammatically defined roles such as agent and patient (semantic roles), and elaborate thematic relations (ETRs) actually accessible to language users. It shows that many phenomena previously analyzed as grammatical can be described in a more simple and convenient way by postulating direct connection between syntactic complements and cognitive relations present in the schema evoked by the verb. The volume focuses on a topic which has been the object of much discussion in the recent literature, namely the definition and delimitation of semantic roles, proposing new solutions to some important theoretical and practical problems in the description of the lexicogrammatical structure of languages, and in particular of verb valency. It shows that in many cases a direct relation can be established between morphosyntactic units and functions, on one hand, and ETRs, on the other, without the intermediation of grammatically defined semantic roles. This makes it possible to analyze thematic relations that have been traditionally problematic, such as the patient, in a linguistically simple and cognitively well-motivated way. Thematic Relations - A Study in the Grammar-Cognition Interface will be a useful resource for practicing linguists working on the analysis of natural languages, in particular on verb valency; verb subcategorization and thematic structure; semantic (thematic) roles, their definition and syntactic coding; the relation between grammatical structure and cognitive schemata (frames); and the structure of the lexicon.

This book explores the evolution of the mental competence for self-reflection: why it evolved, under what selection pressures, in what environments, out of what precursors, and with what mental resources. Integrating evolutionary, psychological, and philosophical perspectives, Radu J. Bogdan argues that the competence for self-reflection, uniquely human and initially autobiographical, evolved under strong and persistent sociocultural and political (collaborative and competitive) pressures on the developing minds of older children and later adults. Self-reflection originated in a basic propensity of the human brain to rehearse anticipatively mental states, speech acts, actions, and states of the world in order to service one's elaborate goal policies. These goal policies integrate offline representations of one's own mental states and actions and those of others in order to handle the challenges of a complex and dynamic sociopolitical and sociocultural life, calling for an adaptive intramental self-regulation: that intramental adaptation is self-reflection.

In the past few years, with the evolution of advanced persistent threats and mutation techniques, sensitive and damaging information from a variety of sources have been exposed to possible corruption and hacking. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and similar disciplines of cognitive science applications have been found to have significant applications in the domain of cyber security. Machine Learning and Cognitive Science Applications in Cyber Security examines different applications of cognition that can be used to detect threats and analyze data to capture malware. Highlighting such topics as anomaly detection, intelligent platforms, and triangle scheme, this publication is designed for IT specialists, computer engineers, researchers, academicians, and industry professionals interested in the impact of machine learning in cyber security and the methodologies that can help improve the performance and reliability of machine learning applications.

This book introduces the reader to relevant logic and provides the subject with a philosophical interpretation. The defining feature of relevant logic is that it forces the premises of an argument to be really used ('relevant') in deriving its conclusion. The logic is placed in the context of possible world semantics and situation semantics, which are then applied to provide an understanding of the various logical particles (especially implication and negation) and natural language conditionals. The book ends by examining various applications of relevant logic and presenting some interesting open problems. It will be of interest to a range of readers including advanced students of logic, philosophical and mathematical logicians, and computer scientists.

To most of us, learning something "the hard way" implies wasted time and effort. Good teaching, we believe, should be creatively tailored to the different learning styles of students and should use strategies that make learning easier. Make It Stick "turns fashionable ideas like these on their head. Drawing on recent discoveries in cognitive psychology and other disciplines, the authors offer concrete techniques for becoming more productive learners.

Memory plays a central role in our ability to carry out complex cognitive tasks, such as applying knowledge to problems never before encountered and drawing inferences from facts already known. New insights into how memory is encoded, consolidated, and later retrieved have led to a better understanding of how we learn. Grappling with the impediments that make learning challenging leads both to more complex mastery and better retention of what was learned.

Many common study habits and practice routines turn out to be counterproductive. Underlining and highlighting, rereading, cramming, and single-minded repetition of new skills create the illusion of mastery, but gains fade quickly. More complex and durable learning come from self-testing, introducing certain difficulties in practice, waiting to re-study new material until a little forgetting has set in, and interleaving the practice of one skill or topic with another. Speaking most urgently to students, teachers, trainers, and athletes, Make It Stick "will appeal to all those interested in the challenge of lifelong learning and self-improvement.

Grammar and Conceptualization documents some major developments in the theory of cognitive grammar during the last decade. By further articulating the framework and showing its application to numerous domains of linguistic structure, this book substantiates the claim that lexicon, morphology, and syntax form a gradation consisting of assemblies of symbolic structures (form-meaning pairings).

'An original, provocative and fascinating new theory by one of the world's leading neuroscientists about why the mind wanders - and when and why it's good for you' Daniel Gilbert Your brain is noisy. Certain regions are always grinding away at involuntary activities like daydreaming and intrusive thoughts - taking up to forty-seven percent of your waking time. This is mindwandering. Mindwandering is the first popular book to explore the phenomenon of our wandering minds and the cutting-edge new research behind it. Cognitive neuroscientist Moshe Bar combines his decades of research to explain the benefits and the possible cost of mindwandering within the broader context of psychology, neuroscience, psychiatry and philosophy. He provides you with practical knowledge that can help strengthen your relationships with others, increase your concentration at work and reduce your anxiety. 'Bar's revelatory, pioneering studies are finally available for everyone to enjoy, so we can optimally direct our states of mind to better align with the moment' David Eagleman, New York Times-bestselling author of Incognito and Livewired 'Highlights the role of mindwandering in solving problems, inducing happiness and in teaching us to bring the right mind to the right time' Dr Nancy Etcoff, psychologist at Harvard Medical School 'A gentle and humane book that should be read by everyone interested in the human mind and the human brain' Andy Clark, Professor of Cognitive Philosophy, University of Sussex

A familiar trope of cognitive science, linguistics, and the philosophy of psychology over the past forty or so years has been the idea of the mind as a modular system-that is, one consisting of functionally specialized subsystems responsible for processing different classes of input, or handling specific cognitive tasks like vision, language, logic, music, and so on. However, one of the major achievements of neuroscience has been the discovery that the brain has incredible powers of renewal and reorganization. This "neuroplasticity," in its various forms, has challenged many of the orthodox conceptions of the mind which originally led cognitive scientists to postulate hardwired mental modules. This book examines how such discoveries have changed the way we think about the structure of the mind. It contends that the mind is more supple than prevailing theories in cognitive science and artificial intelligence acknowledge. The book uses language as a test case. The claim that language is cognitively special has often been understood as the claim that it is underpinned by dedicated-and innate-cognitive mechanisms. Zerilli offers a fresh take on how our linguistic abilities could be domain-general: enabled by a composite of very small and redundant cognitive subsystems, few if any of which are likely to be specialized for language. In arguing for this position, however, the book takes seriously various cases suggesting that language dissociates from other cognitive faculties. Accessibly written, The Adaptable Mind is a fascinating account of neuroplasticity, neural reuse, the modularity of mind, the evolution of language, and faculty psychology.

Recent work in cognitive science, much of it placed in opposition to a computational view of the mind, has argued that the concept of representation and theories based on that concept are not sufficient to explain the details of cognitive processing. These attacks on representation have focused on the importance of context sensitivity in cognitive processing, on the range of individual differences in performance, and on the relationship between minds and the bodies and environments in which they exist. In each case, models based on traditional assumptions about representation have been assumed to be too rigid to account for the effects of these factors on cognitive processing. In place of a representational view of mind, other formalisms and methodologies, such as nonlinear differential equations (or dynamical systems) and situated robotics, have been proposed as better explanatory tools for understanding cognition. This book is based on the notion that, while new tools and approaches for understanding cognition are valuable, representational approaches do not need to be abandoned in the course of constructing new models and explanations. Rather, models that incorporate representation are quite compatible with the kinds of complex situations being modeled with the new methods. This volume illustrates the power of this explicitly representational approach--labeled "cognitive dynamics"--in original essays by prominent researchers in cognitive science. Each chapter explores some aspect of the dynamics of cognitive processing while still retaining representations as the centerpiece of the explanations of the key phenomena. These chapters serve as an existence proof that representation is not incompatible with the dynamics of cognitive processing. The book is divided into sections on foundational issues about the use of representation in cognitive science, the dynamics of low level cognitive processes (such as visual and auditory perception and simple lexical priming), and the dynamics of higher cognitive processes (including categorization, analogy, and decision making).

An inspiring book about creative problem-solving from the No.1 bestselling author of BOUNCE, BLACK BOX THINKING and YOU ARE AWESOME.

Where do the best ideas come from?

And how do we apply these ideas to the problems we face - at work, in the education of our children, and in the biggest shared challenges of our age: rising obesity, terrorism and climate change?

In this bold and inspiring new book, Matthew Syed - the bestselling author of Bounce and Black Box Thinking - argues that individual intelligence is no longer enough; that the only way to tackle these complex problems is to harness the power of our 'cognitive diversity'.

Rebel Ideas is a fascinating journey through the science of team performance. It draws on psychology, economics, anthropology and genetics, and takes lessons from a dazzling range of case-studies, including the catastrophic intelligence failings of the CIA before 9/11, a communication breakdown at the top of Mount Everest, and a moving tale of deradicalization in America's deep South.

It is a book that will strengthen any company, institution or team, but it also offers many individual applications too: the remarkable benefits of personalised nutrition, advice on how to break free of the echo chambers that surround us, and tips on how we can all develop an 'outsider mindset'.

Rebel Ideas offers a radical blueprint for creative problem-solving. It challenges hierarchies, encourages constructive dissent and forces us to think again about where the best ideas come from.