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).

The Textbook of Ion Channels is a set of three volumes providing a wide-ranging reference source on ion channels for students, instructors, and researchers. Ion channels are membrane proteins that control the electrical properties of neurons and cardiac cells, mediate the detection and response to sensory stimuli like light, sound, odor, and taste, and regulate the response to physical stimuli like temperature and pressure. In non-excitable tissues, ion channels are instrumental for the regulation of basic salt balance that is critical for homeostasis. Ion channels are located at the surface membrane of cells, giving them the unique ability to communicate with the environment, as well as the membrane of intracellular organelles, allowing them to regulate internal homeostasis. Ion channels are fundamentally important for human health and diseases, and are important targets for pharmaceuticals in mental illness, heart disease, anesthesia, pain and other clinical applications. The modern methods used in their study are powerful and diverse, ranging from single ion-channel measurement techniques to models of ion channel diseases in animals, and human clinical trials for ion channel drugs. Volume I, Part 1 covers fundamental topics such as the basic principles of ion permeation and selectivity, voltage-dependent, ligand-dependent and mechano-dependent ion channel activation mechanisms, the mechanisms for ion channel desensitization and inactivation and basic ion channel pharmacology and inhibition. Volume I, Part 2 aims to offer a practical guide of cardinal methods for researching ion channels, including heterologous expression and voltage-clamp and patch-clamp electrophysiology, isolation of native currents using patch-clamp, modelling ion channel gating, structures and its dynamics, crystallography and cryo- electron microscopy, fluorescence and paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy methods and genetics approaches in model organisms. All three volumes give the reader an introduction to fundamental concepts needed to understand the mechanism of ion channels, a guide to the technical aspects of ion channel research, offer a modern guide to the properties of major ion channel families, and include coverage of key examples of regulatory, physiological, and disease roles for ion channels.

The Opioid System as the Brain's Interface between Cognition and Motivation, Volume 239, focuses on the opioid system as the interface between the brain's cognitive and motivational systems. As the opioid system is widely distributed through the brain, particularly in areas implicated in cognition (hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, claustrum, thalamus) and motivation (hypothalamus, amygdala, pontine nuclei, periaqueductal gray and medulla), this book provides chapters that address ongoing research on topics such as the Brain's cognitive system, the Brain's motivational system, Antidepressant prescription patterns, Antidepressant-like effects of opioid receptor modulators, the Behavioral effects of antidepressant and anxiolytic drugs, and more.

In this eye-opening chronicle of scientific research on the brain in the early Cold War era, the acclaimed historian Andreas Killen traces the complex circumstances surrounding the genesis of our present-day fascination with this organ. The 1950s were a transformative, even revolutionary decade in the history of brain science. Using new techniques for probing brain activity and function, researchers in neurosurgery, psychiatry, and psychology achieved dramatic breakthroughs in the treatment of illnesses like epilepsy and schizophrenia, as well as the understanding of such faculties as memory and perception. Memory was the site of particularly startling discoveries. As one researcher wrote to another in the middle of that decade, “Memory was the sleeping beauty of the brain—and now she is awake.” Collectively, these advances prefigured the emergence of the field of neuroscience at the end of the twentieth century. But the 1950s also marked the beginning of the Cold War and a period of transformative social change across Western society. These developments resulted in unease and paranoia. Mysterious new afflictions—none more mystifying than “brainwashing”—also appeared at this time. Faced with the discovery that, as one leading psychiatrist put it, “the human personality is not as stable as we often assume,” many researchers in the sciences of brain and behavior joined the effort to understand these conditions. They devised ingenious and sometimes transgressive experimental methods for studying and proposing countermeasures to the problem of Communist mind control. Some of these procedures took on a strange life of their own, escaping the confines of the research lab to become part of 1960s counterculture. Much later, in the early 2000s, they resurfaced in the War on Terror. These stories, often told separately, are brought together by the historian Andreas Killen in this chronicle of the brain’s mid-twentieth-century emergence as both a new research frontier and an organ whose integrity and capacities—especially that of memory—were imagined as uniquely imperiled in the 1950s. Nervous Systems explores the anxious context in which the mid-century sciences of the brain took shape and reveals the deeply ambivalent history that lies behind our contemporary understanding of this organ.

Have you ever wondered why psychologists still can't agree on what intelligence is? Or felt dismayed by debates around individual differences? Criticising the pitfalls of IQ testing, this book explains the true nature of intelligent systems, and their evolution from cells to brains to culture and human minds. Understanding Intelligence debunks many of the myths and misunderstandings surrounding intelligence. It takes a new look at the nature of the environment and the development of 'talent' and achievement. This brings fresh and radical implications for promoting intelligence and creativity, and prompts readers to reconsider their own possibilities and aspirations. Providing a broad context to the subject, the author also unmasks the ideological distortions of intelligence in racism and eugenics, and the suppressed expectations across social classes and genders. This book is a must-read for anyone curious about our own intelligence.

Sex is everywhere in modern society, yet it remains taboo. We all have questions about sex that are too uncomfortable to ask - how do we get reliable answers? In this go-to guide Drs Grant and Chamberlain use their clinical expertise to answer the questions you wish you could ask about sex. Questions like: Is my sex drive or sex behavior normal? Can someone have too much sex? Or too little? How has Internet dating and pornography changed sex? This go-to guide will help you understand common sexual issues, know when to worry (or not) about different sexual behaviors, and learn how our sex lives adapt to changing technology or in times of crisis. It also provides step-by-step advice for dealing with a range of sexual issues, and practical strategies for strengthening relationships.

Cerebral Lateralization and Cognition: Evolutionary and Developmental Investigations of Motor Biases, Volume 238, the latest release in the Progress in Brain Research series, discusses interdisciplinary research on the influence of cerebral lateralization on cognition within an evolutionary framework. Chapters of note in this release include Evolutionary Perspectives: Visual/Motor Biases and Cognition, Manual laterality and cognition through evolution: An archeological perspective, Laterality in insects, Motor asymmetries in fish, amphibians and reptiles, Visual biases and social cognition in animals, Mother and offspring lateralized social interaction across animal species, Manual bias, personality and cognition in common marmosets and other primates, and more.

A variety of ideas, approaches, and techniques exist -- in terms of both architecture and learning -- and this abundance seems to lead to many exciting possibilities in terms of theoretical advances and application potentials. Despite the apparent diversity, there is clearly an underlying unifying theme: architectures that bring together symbolic and connectionist models to achieve a synthesis and synergy of the two different paradigms, and the learning and knowledge acquisition methods for developing such architectures. More effort needs to be extended to exploit the possibilities and opportunities in this area.
This book is the outgrowth of The IJCAI Workshop on Connectionist-Symbolic Integration: From Unified to Hybrid Approaches, held in conjunction with the fourteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI '95). Featuring various presentations and discussions, this two-day workshop brought to light many new ideas, controversies, and syntheses which lead to the present volume.
This book is concerned with the development, analysis, and application of hybrid connectionist-symbolic models in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Drawing contributions from a large international group of experts, it describes and compares a variety of models in this area. The types of models discussed cover a wide range of the evolving spectrum of hybrid models, thus serving as a well-balanced progress report on the state of the art. As such, this volume provides an information clearinghouse for various proposed approaches and models that share the common belief that connectionist and symbolic models can be usefully combined and integrated, and such integration may lead to significant advances in understanding intelligence.

The current popular and scientific interest in virtual environments has provided a new impetus for investigating binaural and spatial hearing. However, the many intriguing phenomena of spatial hearing have long made it an exciting area of scientific inquiry. Psychophysical and physiological investigations of spatial hearing seem to be converging on common explanations of underlying mechanisms. These understandings have in turn been incorporated into sophisticated yet mathematically tractable models of binaural interaction. Thus, binaural and spatial hearing is one of the few areas in which professionals are soon likely to find adequate physiological explanations of complex psychological phenomena that can be reasonably and usefully approximated by mathematical and physical models. This volume grew out of the Conference on Binaural and Spatial Hearing, a four-day event held at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in response to rapid developments in binaural and spatial hearing research and technology. Meant to be more than just a proceedings, it presents chapters that are longer than typical proceedings papers and contain considerably more review material, including extensive bibliographies in many cases. Arranged into topical sections, the chapters represent major thrusts in the recent literature. The authors of the first chapter in each section have been encouraged to take a broad perspective and review the current state of literature. Subsequent chapters in each section tend to be somewhat more narrowly focused, and often emphasize the authors' own work. Thus, each section provides overview, background, and current research on a particular topic. This book is significant in that it reviews the important work during the past 10 to 15 years, and provides greater breadth and depth than most of the previous works.

Hearing is a prerequisite for the evolution of language and thus the development of human societies. It is the only major sense whose evolution can be traced back to vertebrates, starting with sarcopterygians. The book explores the evolution of auditory development that has remained largely unexplored in contemporary theories of neurosensory brain evolution, including the telencephalon. It describes how sensory epithelia from the basilar papilla evolved in the ear and connected dedicated cochlear neurons to neuronal centers in the brain, and deals with how sound is converted through sound modulations into reliably decoded messages. The loss of hearing with age is expected to reach 2.6 billion people by 2050. As such, the book explains and reviews hearing loss at the molecular level to the behavioral level, and provides suggestions to manage the loss.

Orienting is the gateway to attention, the first step in processing stimulus information. This volume examines these initial stages of information intake, focusing on the sensory and motivational mechanisms that determine such phenomena as stimulus selection and inhibition, habituation, pre-attentive processing, and expectancy. Psychophysiological methods are emphasized throughout. The contributors consider analyses based on cardiovascular and electrodermal changes, reflex reactions, and neural events in the cortex and subcortex.
Stimulated by a conference lauding Frances Graham -- held before and during a recent meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, the book presents current theory and research by an international cadre of outstanding investigators. A major researcher and theorist in the field of attention for more than three decades, Dr. Graham contributes an Afterword to the present volume which is both a consideration of the work which has gone before, and a new, original theory paper on preattentive processing and attention.

Bridging the world of reading instruction and applied cognitive neuroscience, this book presents research-backed reading instructional methods and explains how they can be understood through the lens of brain processes. Dispelling myths about neuroscience, Spence and Mitra explore how brain-based research informs literacy research in a way that is clear and accessible to pre-service teachers. Chapters address theories of reading, social emotional learning, phonological processes, embodiment, multilingualism, reading comprehension, and more. Featuring pedagogical strategies and consistent "Did you know?" and "Food for thought" sections, readers will come away with a greater understanding of the reading brain and how neuroscience can facilitate effective instruction. Delving into the extent to which neuroscience can underpin reading research, this text is ideal for pre-service teachers, educators, and students in the fields of language arts and literacy, as well as cognitive neuroscience.

Understanding the mechanisms of learning and memory provides one of the major challenges of contemporary neuroscience. At the reductionist level this equates to an understanding of synaptic plasticity within cortical structures such as the hippocampus. Recently, considerable effort has been devoted to researching two forms of associative synaptic plasticity: long-term potentiation (LTP) and its counterpart, long-term depression (LTD). Increasingly, this field is being influenced by molecular approaches, and Cortical Plasticity brings together the recent findings on all aspects of the induction, maintenance, and expression of LTP and LTD, with an emphasis on molecular mechanisms. This book provides an invaluable overview of a rapidly expanding field and presents discussions from internationally known researchers on a number of controversial issues regarding synaptic plasticity. It will be essential reading for researchers in all areas of neuroscience.

Musical Sense-Making: Enaction, Experience, and Computation broadens the scope of musical sense-making from a disembodied cognitivist approach to an experiential approach. Revolving around the definition of music as a temporal and sounding art, it argues for an interactional and experiential approach that brings together the richness of sensory experience and principles of cognitive economy. Starting from the major distinction between in-time and outside-of-time processing of the sounds, this volume provides a conceptual and operational framework for dealing with sounds in a real-time listening situation, relying heavily on the theoretical groundings of ecology, cybernetics, and systems theory, and stressing the role of epistemic interactions with the sounds. These interactions are considered from different perspectives, bringing together insights from previous theoretical groundings and more recent empirical research. The author's findings are framed within the context of the broader field of enactive and embodied cognition, recent action and perception studies, and the emerging field of neurophenomenology and dynamical systems theory. This volume will particularly appeal to scholars and researchers interested in the intersection between music, philosophy, and/or psychology.

This book explores the underlying biology and neuroscience associated with mental health and wellbeing. This fully revised fourth edition includes new chapters on behavioural science, and brain-gut and brain-gender connections, as well as expanded content on memory and genetics. Integrating up-to-date pharmacological and genetic research with an understanding of environmental factors that impact on human biology, The Biological Basis of Mental Health covers topics including brain development, neural communication, neurotransmitters and receptors, hormones and behaviour, genetic disorders, pharmacology, substance misuse, anxiety, schizophrenia, depression, epilepsy, subcortical degenerative diseases of the brain, dementia, developmental disorders and sleep. This unique textbook is an essential read for all healthcare students, practitioners and educators with an interest in mental health and neuroscience.

How does brain activity give rise to sleep, dreams, learning, memory, and language? Do drugs like cocaine and heroin tap into the same neurochemical systems that evolved for life's natural rewards? What are the powerful new tools of molecular biology that are revolutionizing neuroscience? This undergraduate textbook explores the relation between brain, mind, and behavior. It clears away the extraneous detail that so often impedes learning, and describes critical concepts step by step, in straightforward language. Rich illustrations and thought-provoking review questions further illuminate the relations between biological, behavioral, and mental phenomena. With writing that is focused and engaging, even the more challenging topics of neurotransmission and neuroplasticity become enjoyable to learn. While this textbook filters out non-critical details, it includes all key information, allowing readers to remain focused and enjoy the feeling of mastery that comes from a grounded understanding of a topic, from its fundamentals to its implications.

1) Classic anatomical atlases 2) Detailed labeling of the earliest phases of prenatal neurological development 3) Appeals to neuroanatomists, developmental biologists and clinical practitioners. 4) Persistent relevance - brain development is not going to change

This volume is based on a conference held to examine what is known about cognitive behaviors and brain structure and function in three syndromes and to evaluate the usefulness of such models. The goal of this endeavor is to add to the knowledge base of cognitive neuroscience within a developmental framework. Most of what is known about the neurological basis of cognitive function in humans has been learned from studies of central nervous system trauma or disease in adults. Certain neurodevelopmental disorders affect the central nervous system in unique ways by producing specific as opposed to generalized cognitive deficit. Studies of these disorders using neurobiological and behavioral techniques can yield new insights into the localization of cognitive function and the developmental course of atypical cognitive profiles.
The focus of this book is a discussion of the multidisciplinary research findings from studies of autism, and Williams and Turner syndromes. The approaches, methods, techniques, and findings reported are at the cutting edge of neuroscience research on complex behavior patterns and their neural substrates. Each disorder is accompanied by some degree of general cognitive impairment or mental retardation. Of greater interest are the atypical deficits in which a cognitive function is spared, such as language in Williams syndrome, or is disproportionately depressed as are spatial discrimination skills and visual-motor coordination in Turner syndrome. Drastically reduced or seemingly absent language capabilities and little interaction with other people characterize the core autism syndrome. A comprehensive and critical discussion of appropriate statistical techniques is made vivid by examples given from studies of small groups or single subjects in neurolinguistics and related fields.

Since the publication of the original edition in 1982, pesticide-related poisonings, both single cases and epidemic-scale situations, have continued to occur unabated. This new edition of Pesticides and Neurological Diseases reviews current literature describing the effects of insecticides (chlorinated hydrocarbons, organophosphorus and carbamate esters, and the pyrethroid esters), fungicides (organomercurials, dithiocarbamates), and herbicides (chlorophenoxy acids and esters) on the mammalian nervous system. Acute and chronic exposures have resulted in both subtle and serious neurological deficits in the peripheral and central nervous systems, marked by transient effects preceding those of delayed onset and of persistent duration. The chapters have been largely revised and rewritten to introduce newer theories of mechanism(s) of action studied at the laboratory bench. New findings and observations on human intoxications are included as well.
This reference will interest physicians involved in environmental medicine and occupational health, as well as graduate students and researchers in the fields of neurophysiology, pharmacology, and the toxicology of pesticides. It may also be useful to the layperson interested in learning more about chemicals routinely used in the home, garden, greenhouse, orchards, and fields.

"Extensively researched. Aguirre writes clearly, concisely, and often cinematically. The book succeeds in providing an accessible yet substantive look at memory science and offering glimpses of the often-challenging process of biomedical investigation."-Science Sometimes, it's not the discovery that's hard - it's convincing others that you're right. The Memory Thief chronicles an investigation into a rare and devastating amnesia first identified in a cluster of fentanyl overdose survivors. When a handful of doctors embark on a quest to find out exactly what happened to these marginalized victims, they encounter indifference and skepticism from the medical establishment. But after many blind alleys and occasional strokes of good luck, they go on to prove that opioids can damage the hippocampus, a tiny brain region responsible for forming new memories. This discovery may have implications for millions of people around the world. Through the prism of this fascinating story, Aguirre recounts the obstacles researchers so often confront when new ideas bump up against conventional wisdom. She explains the elegant tricks scientists use to tease out the fundamental mechanisms of memory. And finally, she reveals why researchers now believe that a treatment for Alzheimer's is within reach.

With the single-nerve fiber action potential recording method and the single-motor unit electromyography, the functioning of the human central nervous system (CNS) is analysed at the single-neuron level under physiologic conditions following injury, malformation and degeneration. It is shown that the self-organisation of the neuronal networks of the human CNS by phase and frequency coordination becomes impaired following all nervous system diseases. Out of the differences between the functioning of the healthy and pathologically functioning CNS, a repair treatment is developed called Co-ordination Dynamics Therapy (CDT). This movement-based learning therapy is able to improve almost every nervous system in its functioning by functional and structural repair for all ages including premature born babies and in aging. The therapy progress with CDT can be quantified by using the System Theory of Pattern Formation. By pattern change, given by a special CDT device, a single value is obtained for the quality of CNS functioning. Especially the tremor in Parkinson's disease and the urinary bladder repair in spinal cord injury are analysed in detail by the human neurophysiologic recording methods and clinical assessments. The repair of the human nervous system is shown in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies in mild and severe traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries. By applying CDT, CNS functioning can also be improved in Parkinson's disease and in aging. The rate of improvement/repair by learning is measured in the healthy and the diseased nervous systems. It is emphasised that the efficacy of movement-based learning therapies may differ by a factor of 100. A powerful tool in learning is the learning transfer. By training integrative movements, including automatisms, not only the trained movements can be improved, but also the vegetative and higher mental functions can be repaired as, for example, continence, speech and cardiovascular performance.

A pioneering text in its first edition, this revised publication of Cognitive Poetics offers a rigorous and principled approach to literary reading and analysis. The second edition of this seminal text features: * updated theory, frameworks, and examples throughout, including new explanations of literary meaning, the power of reading, literary force, and emotion; * extended examples of literary texts from Old English to contemporary literature, covering genres including religious, realist, romantic, science fictional, and surrealist texts, and encompassing poetry, prose, and drama; * new chapters on the mind-modelling of character, the building of text-worlds, the feeling of immersion and ambience, and the resonant power of emotion in literature; * fully updated and accessible accounts of Cognitive Grammar, deictic shifts, prototypicality, conceptual framing, and metaphor in literary reading. Encouraging the reader to adopt a fresh approach to understanding literature and literary analyses, each chapter introduces a different framework within cognitive poetics and relates it to a literary text. Accessibly written and reader-focused, the book invites further explorations either individually or within a classroom setting. This thoroughly revised edition of Cognitive Poetics includes an expanded further reading section and updated explorations and discussion points, making it essential reading for students on literary theory and stylistics courses, as well as a fundamental tool for those studying critical theory, linguistics, and literary studies.

* Provides very accessible coverage of a complex topic. * Includes a wealth of open-ended activities, practical strategies and case studies. * Blends together theory and practice to increase the knowledge, understanding, skills and confidence of early years practitioners. * Covers a range of hot topics, considering how poverty, adversity, and mental health, all affect the developing child.

This book is the result of an international symposium in biological psychology, held in honor of Knut Larsson. This renowned researcher -- in his search for the true meaning of "mind vs. matter" -- became involved in many divergent areas of the field, such as the neurobiology of sexual behavior and sexual differentiation, aspects of functional neuroanatomy, behavioral endocrinology, and psychopharmacology. Through experimentation and much consultation with other area specialists, Larsson observed such phenomena as the adaptation of behavior-determining neuroendocrine events to the physical environment and the hormonal regulation of sexual behavior and differentiation. This tribute to his research presents important features of necessary paradigms for the analysis and study of experimental psychology within the biological perspective.