Before Chelsea Conaboy gave birth to her first child, she anticipated the joy of holding her newborn son, the endless dirty nappies and the sleepless nights. What she didn't expect was how different she would feel. It wasn't simply the extraordinary demands of this new role, but a shift in self - as deep as it was disorienting. In truth, something was changing: her brain. New parents undergo major brain changes, driven by hormones and the deluge of stimuli a baby provides. These neurobiological changes help all parents - birthing or otherwise - adapt in those intense first days and prepare for a long period of learning how to meet their child's needs. Yet this science is mostly absent from the public conversation about parenthood. Conaboy delves into the neuroscience to reveal unexpected upsides, generations of scientific neglect and a powerful new narrative of parenthood.

Despite American education's recent mania for standardized tests, testing misses what really matters about learning: the desire to learn in the first place. Curiosity is vital, but it remains a surprisingly understudied characteristic. The Hungry Mind is a deeply researched, highly readable exploration of what curiosity is, how it can be measured, how it develops in childhood, and how it can be fostered in school. "Engel draws on the latest social science research and incidents from her own life to understand why curiosity is nearly universal in babies, pervasive in early childhood, and less evident in school...Engel's most important finding is that most classroom environments discourage curiosity...In an era that prizes quantifiable results, a pedagogy that privileges curiosity is not likely to be a priority." -Glenn C. Altschuler, Psychology Today "Susan Engel's The Hungry Mind, a book which engages in depth with how our interest and desire to explore the world evolves, makes a valuable contribution not only to the body of academic literature on the developmental and educational psychology of children, but also to our knowledge on why and how we learn." -Inez von Weitershausen, LSE Review of Books

Why our brains aren't built for media multitasking, and how we can learn to live with technology in a more balanced way. "Brilliant and practical, just what we need in these techno-human times."-Jack Kornfield, author of The Wise Heart Most of us will freely admit that we are obsessed with our devices. We pride ourselves on our ability to multitask-read work email, reply to a text, check Facebook, watch a video clip. Talk on the phone, send a text, drive a car. Enjoy family dinner with a glowing smartphone next to our plates. We can do it all, 24/7! Never mind the errors in the email, the near-miss on the road, and the unheard conversation at the table. In The Distracted Mind, Adam Gazzaley and Larry Rosen-a neuroscientist and a psychologist-explain why our brains aren't built for multitasking, and suggest better ways to live in a high-tech world without giving up our modern technology. The authors explain that our brains are limited in their ability to pay attention. We don't really multitask but rather switch rapidly between tasks. Distractions and interruptions, often technology-related-referred to by the authors as "interference"-collide with our goal-setting abilities. We want to finish this paper/spreadsheet/sentence, but our phone signals an incoming message and we drop everything. Even without an alert, we decide that we "must" check in on social media immediately. Gazzaley and Rosen offer practical strategies, backed by science, to fight distraction. We can change our brains with meditation, video games, and physical exercise; we can change our behavior by planning our accessibility and recognizing our anxiety about being out of touch even briefly. They don't suggest that we give up our devices, but that we use them in a more balanced way.

Bridging the gap between cognition and culture, this handbook explores both social scientific and humanities approaches to understanding the physical processes of religious life, tradition, practice, and belief. It reflects the cultural turn within the study of religion and puts theory to the fore, moving beyond traditional theological, philosophical, and ethnographic understandings of the aesthetics of religion. Editors Anne Koch and Katharina Wilkens bring together research in cultural studies, cognitive studies, material religion, religion and the arts, and epistemology. Questions of identity, gender, ethnicity, and postcolonialism are discussed throughout. Key topics include materiality, embodiment, performance, popular/vernacular art and space to move beyond a sensory understanding of aesthetics. Emerging areas of research are covered, including secular aesthetics and the aesthetic of spirits. This is an important contribution to theory and method in the study of religion, and is grounded in research that has been taking place in Europe over the past 20 years. Case studies are drawn from around the world with contributions from scholars based in Europe, the USA, and Australia. The book is illustrated with over 40 color images and features a foreword from Birgit Meyer.

In this ground-breaking synthesis of art and science, Diana Deutsch, one of the world's leading experts on the psychology of music, shows how illusions of music and speech-many of which she herself discovered-have fundamentally altered thinking about the brain. These astonishing illusions show that people can differ strikingly in how they hear musical patterns-differences that reflect variations in brain organization as well as influences of language on music perception. Drawing on a wide variety of fields, including psychology, music theory, linguistics, and neuroscience, Deutsch examines questions such as: When an orchestra performs a symphony, what is the "real" music? Is it in the mind of the composer, or the conductor, or different members of the audience? Deutsch also explores extremes of musical ability, and other surprising responses to music and speech. Why is perfect pitch so rare? Why do some people hallucinate music or speech? Why do we hear phantom words and phrases? Why are we subject to stuck tunes, or "earworms"? Why do we hear a spoken phrase as sung just because it is presented repeatedly? In evaluating these questions, she also shows how music and speech are intertwined, and argues that they stem from an early form of communication that had elements of both. Many of the illusions described in the book are so striking and paradoxical that you need to hear them to believe them. The book enables you to listen to the sounds that are described while reading about them.

In Metaphors of Eucharistic Presence: Language, Cognition, and the Body and Blood of Christ, Stephen R. Shaver brings together the fields of cognitive linguistics and liturgical theology to propose a new approach to the ecumenically controversial issue of eucharistic presence. Drawing from the work of cognitive linguists such as George Lakoff, Gilles Fauconnier, and Mark Turner, and theologians such as Robert Masson and John Sanders, Shaver argues that there is no clear division between literal and figurative language: rather, human cognition is grounded in sensorimotor experience, and phenomena such as metaphor and conceptual blending are basic building blocks of thought. Complex realities are ordinarily understood by means of more than one metaphor. Inherited models of eucharistic presence, then, are not necessarily mutually exclusive but can serve as complementary members of a shared ecumenical repertoire. The central element of this repertoire is the motif of identity-the eucharistic bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ-grounded in the Synoptic and Pauline institution narratives. From a cognitive standpoint, this metaphor can be understood both as figurative and as true in the proper sense, resolving a dichotomy that has divided the churches since the Reformation. The identity motif is complemented by four major non-scriptural motifs: representation, change, containment, and conduit. Inaugurating a new interdisciplinary conversation, this book contributes to ongoing ecumenical reconciliation not only by addressing eucharistic presence but also by demonstrating an approach which may hold promise in other historically controverted areas. Meanwhile for cognitive linguists it offers an intriguing case study in the application of that discipline to theological questions.

WINNER OF THE 2014 BRAIN PRIZE From the acclaimed author of Reading in the Brain and How We Learn, a breathtaking look at the new science that can track consciousness deep in the brain How does our brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events behind a conscious state. We can now pin down the neurons that fire when a person reports becoming aware of a piece of information and understand the crucial role unconscious computations play in how we make decisions. The emerging theory enables a test of consciousness in animals, babies, and those with severe brain injuries. A joyous exploration of the mind and its thrilling complexities, Consciousness and the Brain will excite anyone interested in cutting-edge science and technology and the vast philosophical, personal, and ethical implications of finally quantifying consciousness.

Research on natural and artificial brains is proceeding at a rapid pace. However, the understanding of the essence of consciousness has changed slightly over the millennia, and only the last decade has brought some progress to the area. Scientific ideas emerged that the soul could be a product of the material body and that calculating machines could imitate brain processes. However, the authors of this book reject the previously common dualism-the view that the material and spiritual-psychic processes are separate and require a completely different substance as their foundation. Reductive Model of the Conscious Mind is a forward-thinking book wherein the authors identify processes that are the essence of conscious thinking and place them in the imagined, simplified structure of cells able to memorize and transmit information in the form of impulses, which they call neurons. The purpose of the study is to explain the essence of consciousness to the degree of development of natural sciences, because only the latter can find a way to embed the concept of the conscious mind in material brains. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 works to convince readers that the emergence of consciousness does not require detailed knowledge of the structure and morphology of the brain, with the exception of some specific properties of the neural network structure that the authors attempt to point out. Part 2 proves that the biological structure of many natural brains fulfills the necessary conditions for consciousness and intelligent thinking. Similarly, Part 3 shows the ways in which artificial creatures imitating natural brains can meet these conditions, which gives great hopes for building artificially intelligent beings endowed with consciousness. Covering topics that include cognitive architecture, the embodied mind, and machine learning, this book is ideal for cognitive scientists, philosophers of mind, neuroscientists, psychologists, researchers, academicians, and advanced-level students. The book can also help to focus the research of linguists, neurologists, and biophysicists on the biophysical basis of postulated information processing into knowledge structures.

'GeniusX: Business Intelligence' presents established guidelines to help you understand your inner self as well as those around you across a variety of situations. Positive thinking, critical decision-making, personnel selection, ways of life and customised methods for business operations are presented via the concept of people categorisations of which Cognitive Neuroscience lists six types; Game Changes, Entrepreneurs, Networkers, Informationists, Uniques and Sharers. We are able to learn about people if we can unlock the diverse decision-making processes that take place in their brains. Once we understand the inner workings, we can rectify problems and deal with all types of people and situations. Knowing the unique working styles of individuals allows you to build success at work, and enjoyment in your personal life at your own pace.

While cognitive informatics and natural intelligence are receiving greater attention by researchers, multidisciplinary approaches still struggle with fundamental problems involving psychology and neurobiological processes of the brain. Examining the difficulties of certain approaches using the tools already available is vital for propelling knowledge forward and making further strides. Innovations, Algorithms, and Applications in Cognitive Informatics and Natural Intelligence is a collection of innovative research that examines the enhancement of human cognitive performance using emerging technologies. Featuring research on topics such as parallel computing, neuroscience, and signal processing, this book is ideally designed for engineers, computer scientists, programmers, academicians, researchers, and students.

Why psychology is in peril as a scientific discipline--and how to save it Psychological science has made extraordinary discoveries about the human mind, but can we trust everything its practitioners are telling us? In recent years, it has become increasingly apparent that a lot of research in psychology is based on weak evidence, questionable practices, and sometimes even fraud. The Seven Deadly Sins of Psychology diagnoses the ills besetting the discipline today and proposes sensible, practical solutions to ensure that it remains a legitimate and reliable science in the years ahead. In this unflinchingly candid manifesto, Chris Chambers draws on his own experiences as a working scientist to reveal a dark side to psychology that few of us ever see. Using the seven deadly sins as a metaphor, he shows how practitioners are vulnerable to powerful biases that undercut the scientific method, how they routinely torture data until it produces outcomes that can be published in prestigious journals, and how studies are much less reliable than advertised. He reveals how a culture of secrecy denies the public and other researchers access to the results of psychology experiments, how fraudulent academics can operate with impunity, and how an obsession with bean counting creates perverse incentives for academics. Left unchecked, these problems threaten the very future of psychology as a science--but help is here. Outlining a core set of best practices that can be applied across the sciences, Chambers demonstrates how all these sins can be corrected by embracing open science, an emerging philosophy that seeks to make research and its outcomes as transparent as possible.