Emotions, behaviors, thoughts, creations, planning, daily physical activities, and routines are programmed within our brains. To acquire these capacities, the brain takes time to fully develop--a process that may take the first 20 years of life. Disruptions of the brain involving neurons, axons, dendrites, synapses, neurotransmitters or brain infrastructure produce profound changes in development and functions of the one organ that makes us unique. To understand the functions and development of the brain is difficult enough, but to reverse the consequences of trauma and repair the damage is even more challenging. To meet this challenge and increase understanding, a host of disciplines working and communicating together are required.
The International Association for the Study of Traumatic Brain Injury tried to correct this limitation during its meetings of international clinicians, researchers, and scientists from many fields. It was felt that many of the outstanding thoughts and ideas from the participants' most recent meeting and from others working in the field of traumatic brain injury (TBI) should be shared. This book was conceived not as proceedings of the conference, but as a collection of knowledge for those working in the acute and chronic recovery aspects of head injury.
This book reflects the importance of the team approach to patients with TBI. The chapter authors come from a diverse array of disciplines--basic science, neurosurgery, neurology, radiology, psychology, neuropsychology, and legal, consumer, and speech/language science. Their contributions provide the most current research and the latest ways of managing a variety of aspects of TBI.

Emotions, behaviors, thoughts, creations, planning, daily physical activities, and routines are programmed within our brains. To acquire these capacities, the brain takes time to fully develop--a process that may take the first 20 years of life. Disruptions of the brain involving neurons, axons, dendrites, synapses, neurotransmitters or brain infrastructure produce profound changes in development and functions of the one organ that makes us unique. To understand the functions and development of the brain is difficult enough, but to reverse the consequences of trauma and repair the damage is even more challenging. To meet this challenge and increase understanding, a host of disciplines working and communicating together are required.
The International Association for the Study of Traumatic Brain Injury tried to correct this limitation during its meetings of international clinicians, researchers, and scientists from many fields. It was felt that many of the outstanding thoughts and ideas from the participants' most recent meeting and from others working in the field of traumatic brain injury (TBI) should be shared. This book was conceived not as proceedings of the conference, but as a collection of knowledge for those working in the acute and chronic recovery aspects of head injury.
This book reflects the importance of the team approach to patients with TBI. The chapter authors come from a diverse array of disciplines--basic science, neurosurgery, neurology, radiology, psychology, neuropsychology, and legal, consumer, and speech/language science. Their contributions provide the most current research and the latest ways of managing a variety of aspects of TBI.

An increase in research into all facets of learning difficulties has resulted in a deeper understanding of the problems. This book includes a description and explanation of reading, spelling and learning difficulties; provides chapters on psychological and neuropsychological assessment; explains the associations between behavioural problems and learning difficulties; and critically reviews remedial approaches, incorporating a summary of what is known about their efficacy. The importance of dealing with attendant behavioural problems and the significance of phonological knowledge in literacy learning are central themes.; Intended to be a succinct and accessible synthesis of current knowledge in this area, this book should be of interest to professionals who encounter children with learning difficulties, tertiary students and parents.

Conceived at a time when biological research on aggression and violence was drawn into controversy because of sociopolitical questions about its study, this volume provides an up-to-date account of recent biological studies performed -- mostly on humans. A group of scientists recognized the importance of freedom of inquiry and deemed it vital to address the most promising biological research in the field. The focus on biological mechanisms is not meant to imply that biological variables are paramount as a determinant of violence. Rather, biological variables operate in conjunction with other variables contributing to aggression or violence, and a complete understanding of this phenomenon requires consideration of all influences bearing on it.
This book will familiarize readers with the rapidly growing and increasingly significant body of knowledge on the biological bases of human antisocial, aggressive, and violent behaviors. The editors concentrated on biological influences that support the basic physiological and biochemical processes of the brain and did not cover those biological influences that impact on the health of the individual such as head injury, pregnancy and birth complications, diet, and exposure to lead and other toxins. They focused on biological influences to illuminate their role in the complex behavioral phenomenon of violence.
Three different approaches to the biological study of human antisocial, aggressive, and violent behaviors are represented -- genetic, neurobiological, and biosocial. Representing each of these three approaches, individual chapters from investigators in psychobiology, biological psychiatry, and basic-clinical neurosciences address the most recent experimental findings, methods, theory, and common misconceptions in the biological study of aggression and violence. The areas of primary focus are behavior and molecular genetics, neurochemistry and hormones, neuroimaging, psychophysiology and developmental psychobiology. Generally speaking, investigators following these different approaches have experience in different scientific backgrounds, select different methods, generate different analyses, employ different conceptual definitions for some of the same terms, and assume a different philosophical stance in attempting to explain violence. Nevertheless, all are united in their efforts to understand the biological underpinnings of violence. This book then assumes a comprehensive approach wherein different levels of analysis and different approaches inform each other. It is clear from the studies reported that aggression and violence are multidetermined phenomena and understanding them requires an interdisciplinary approach spanning economic, sociopolitical, psychological, sociological, and criminological as well as biomedical considerations. Nature (biology) and nurture (experience, context) are fundamentally inseparable in explaining aggression and violence; biology may affect experience or context, but experience or context also influences biology. Both need to be studied in a search for explanations of this phenomena.

A child with developmental dyslexia or an adult with a reading disorder following brain damage might read the word shoe as 'show', why does this happen? Most current information processing models of reading distinguish between two alternative procedures for the pronunciation of a printed word. The difference between these concerns the level at which orthography is translated to phonology in one, the word-level procedure, a word is read aloud with reference to knowledge specific to that whole word. In the other, the sub-word-level procedure, a printed word is pronounced with reference to knowledge about smaller segments which occur in many different words. Both procedures contribute to normal skilled reading and its acquisition. But if one of the procedures is disrupted, then oral reading will be forced to rely on the alternative routine. Surface dyslexia is a general label for any disorder of reading which results from inadequate functioning of the word-level procedure and in consequence abnormal reliance on sub-word level translation from orthography to phonology. Originally published in 1985, this book provides new evidence about the diverse manifestations of surface dyslexia in adult neurological patients and in children with developmental disorders of reading. The data are drawn from speakers of a range of languages with distinct orthographies. Process models for the pronunciation of print are elaborated, and an appendix gives neurological information on the patients reported.

In the World Library of Psychologists series, international experts themselves present career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces - extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, and their major practical theoretical contributions. Glyn Humphreys is an internationally renowned cognitive neuropsychologist with research interests covering object recognition and its disorders, visual word recognition, object and spatial attention, the effects of action on cognition, and social cognition. Within the field of Psychology he has won a number of prestigious awards, including the Spearman Medal, the President's Award of the British Psychological Society, and the Donald Broadbent Prize from the European Society for Cognitive Psychology. This collection reflects the different directions in his work and approaches which have been adopted. It will enable the reader to trace key developments in cognitive neuropsychology in a period of rapid change over the last thirty years. A newly written introduction contextualises the selection in relation to changes in the field during this time. Attention, Perception and Action will be invaluable reading for students and researchers in visual cognition, cognitive neuropsychology and vision neuroscience.

Signal detection theory--as developed in electrical engineering and based on statistical decision theory--was first applied to human sensory discrimination 40 years ago. The theoretical intent was to provide a valid model of the discrimination process; the methodological intent was to provide reliable measures of discrimination acuity in specific sensory tasks. An analytic method of detection theory, called the relative operating characteristic (ROC), can isolate the effect of the placement of the decision criterion, which may be variable and idiosyncratic, so that a pure measure of intrinsic discrimination acuity is obtained. For the past 20 years, ROC analysis has also been used to measure the discrimination acuity or inherent accuracy of a broad range of practical diagnostic systems. It was widely adopted by methodologists in the field of information retrieval, is increasingly used in weather forecasting, and is the generally preferred method in clinical medicine, primarily in radiology. This book attends to both themes, ROC analysis in the psychology laboratory and in practical diagnostic settings, and to their essential unity.
The focus of this book is on "detection" and "recognition" as fundamental tasks that underlie most complex behaviors. As defined here, they serve to distinguish between two alternative, confusable stimulus categories, which may be perceptual or cognitive categories in the psychology laboratory, or different states of the world in practical diagnostic tasks.
This book on signal detection theory in psychology was written by one of the developers of the theory, who co-authored with D.M. Green the classic work published in this area in 1966 (reprinted in 1974 and 1988). This volume reviews the history of the theory in engineering, statistics, and psychology, leading to the separate measurement of the two independent factors in all discrimination tasks, discrimination acuity and decision criterion. It extends the previous book to show how in several areas of psychology--in vigilance and memory--what had been thought to be discrimination effects were, in reality, effects of a changing criterion.
The book shows that data plotted in terms of the relative operating characteristic have essentially the same form across the wide range of discrimination tasks in psychology. It develops the implications of this ROC form for measures of discrimination acuity, pointing up the valid ones and identifying several common, but invalid, ones. The area under the binormal ROC is seen to be supported by the data; the popular measures "d'" and percent correct are not. An appendix describes the best, current programs for fitting ROCs and estimating their parameters, indices, and standard errors.
The application of ROC analysis to diagnostic tasks is also described. Diagnostic accuracy in a wide range of tasks can be expressed in terms of the ROC area index. Choosing the appropriate decision criterion for a given diagnostic setting--rather than considering some single criterion to be natural and fixed--has a major impact on the efficacy of a diagnostic process or system. Illustrated here by separate chapters are diagnostic systems in radiology, information retrieval, aptitude testing, survey research, and environments in which imminent dangerous conditions must be detected. Data from weather forecasting, blood testing, and polygraph lie detection are also reported. One of these chapters describes a general approach to enhancing the accuracy of diagnostic systems.

Alcohol abuse is a major health problem in most parts of the world. This book focuses on the way in which alcohol affects the brain, with the aim of describing advances in the neuropsychology of alcoholism in a way that makes this work accessible to clinicians from a variety of backgrounds who treat people with alcohol-related problems.; The book is divided into four parts. Part One provides an introduction to the medical and neurological conditions that can result from alcoholism, and to the process of neuropsychological assessment. The problems involved in conducting research in this area are also considered. In Part Two, research that focuses directly on changes to the nervous system is surveyed. This includes studies of both the short-term and the chronic neurological changes in the brain caused by alcohol. In Part Three, studies of the neuropsychological effects of acute intoxication, social drinking and alcohol abuse are described. Finally, in Part Four, the implications of neuropsychological research for the assessment and management of patients with alcohol problems are considered.; The objective of this book is to collate the range of research work that is relevant to understanding how alcohol affects the brain. This includes both the acute and the chronic effects, at both the biological and physiological levels.

This is a very unusual book. It brings to the English speaking reader a masterpiece written some 50 years ago by one of the greatest minds of the 20th century--Nicholai Aleksandrovich Bernstein--considered the founder of many contemporary fields of science such as biomechanics, motor control, and physiology of activity. Divided into two parts, this volume's first section is a translation of the Russian book "On Dexterity and Its Development." It presents, in a very reader-friendly style, Bernstein's major ideas related to the development and control of voluntary movements in general, and to the notion of dexterity, in particular. Although very few scientific works remain interesting to the reader 50 years after they were written, this volume--now available for the first time in English--is a rare exception to this rule. His ideas are certainly not obsolete. Actually, we are just starting to grasp the depth and breadth of his thinking, especially his analysis of the complex notion of dexterity. The second section provides both a historical and a contemporary perspective on Bernstein's ideas.
The original work was directed at a wide audience ranging from specialists in biomechanics and motor behavior, to coaches, neurologists, physical therapists, athletes, and even inquisitive college and high school students. The chapters contributed by contemporary scientists mirror Bernstein's style and present new findings in the areas of biomechanics, motor control, and motor development in a way that would be both understandable to non-specialists in these areas, and informative for professionals working in different areas related to human movement. All those interested in the origins and mechanisms of the production of voluntary movements, irrespective of their educational and professional background, will find this book valuable. In addition, the unique history and composition of this text will make it helpful and attractive to historians and philosophers of science.

Stroke, Body Image, and Self Representation provides a psychoanalytic reading of the subjective difficulties encountered by patients who have suffered a stroke. The book is based on the words of stroke patients and on their self-portraits, which are then compared with the words and portraits of subjects devoid of brain lesions. Pathological and normal self-portraits illustrate in very concrete terms the libidinal investment of our body parts. The author's original data sheds an entirely new light on the subjective effects of a stroke. On the one hand, the permanent sequelae of a stroke can cause a narcissistic injury; on the other, a stroke may affect the brain circuitry involved in the patient's body image, undoing the normal narcissistic reactions. This may happen after right hemisphere lesions and cause spectacular symptoms, such as the personification of a paralyzed hand or the apparent ignorance of a severe paralysis. This double aspect of a stroke is no small problem for rehabilitation therapists, who must avoid two pitfalls: considering any issue as psychological in nature, as if the brain lesion could not produce any organic changes, or, on the contrary, attributing any behavioural problems to brain dysfunction, as if the patient was devoid of normal psychological reactions. One of the aims of this book is to help therapists gaining their bearings in this little-known field. In addition to this clinical interest, the author's psychoanalytic reading brings an original contribution to the physiopathology of cognition and self-representation. The data gathered by Catherine Morin show that self-representation cannot be considered only a cognitive operation. They also suggest that normal cognitive activity relies on both the stability of body image and the repression of the object. Stroke, Body Image, and Self Representation will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychologists, social workers, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and rehabilitation therapists working with stroke survivors and patients with body image disorders.

Devoted exclusively to prospective memory, this volume organizes the research and thoughts of the important contributors to the field in one comprehensive resource. The chapter authors not only focus on their own work, but also review other research areas and address those where the methods and theories from the retrospective memory literature are useful and where they fall short. Each section is followed by at least one commentary written by a prominent scholar in the field of memory. The commentators present critical analyses of the chapters, note ideas that they found particularly exciting, and use these ideas as a foundation on which to elaborate their own views of prospective memory.
This volume will stimulate the thinking of active prospective memory researchers, provide a coherent organization of the area for the increasing number of people who are interested in prospective memory but who are not yet actively conducting research in the area, and serve as a book of readings for upper division seminars.

Each of us is controlled in some way by shame, one of the ugliest emotions in human experience. It saps our self-respect, builds walls between people, and forces us to create elaborate defenses to protect ourselves. This informative and practical analysis of the role of shame in our lives helps us to understand the root of our insecurity. Only by facing and coming to terms with our shame can we begin to resolve insecurities and become free to participate fully in life. Nichols discusses love and worth, the social sources of humiliation, the frustration of adolescence, and positive parenting, among other important topics, in this wonderful combination of clinical sophistication, common sense, and humanity

This book develops a theory of picture perception and aesthetic response, arguing that images can generate in us a complex pattern of mental changes, or transformations. It is essential reading to those seriously involved in linking the arts and cognitive sciences.

This title was first published in 1981.

Offering the broadest review of psychological perspectives on human expertise to date, this volume covers behavioral, computational, neural, and genetic approaches to understanding complex skill. The chapters show how performance in music, the arts, sports, games, medicine, and other domains reflects basic traits such as personality and intelligence, as well as knowledge and skills acquired through training. In doing so, this book moves the field of expertise beyond the duality of "nature vs. nurture" toward an integrative understanding of complex skill. This book is an invaluable resource for researchers and students interested in expertise, and for professionals seeking current reviews of psychological research on expertise.

In a wide array of social sciences, interest in emotion is flourishing. Psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, communication scholars, and cognitive scientists are exploring human emotions in a variety of contexts. This book speaks to central issues raised by scholars in these disciplines through its review of leading cognitive appraisal theories of emotion, clarification of the nature of empathy, and exploration of how people identify and respond to the emotions hidden within the stories people tell.
Intrigue with the separateness and oneness of human existence and experience is evident throughout history. It appears in the teachings of all great religions, in the commentaries of philosophers, and in the perceptions of the most famous characters in classic literature. Perhaps it is this wonderment with human distinction and unity that has spawned interest in empathy as a pervasive human phenomena.
This book presents an initial examination of the role of cognitive appraisals in facilitating decoding accuracy and empathy. It compares the leading cognitive appraisal theories and addresses the relationships among appraisal information, empathy, and emotion decoding. Real-life descriptions of emotional experiences are used as the basis for a study examining the relationships between perceived appraisals and perspective-taking, and accurate decoding and empathy. Other studies probe the effects of specific appraisal information on decoding and emotional reactions, and address emotional reactivity to stories and delayed retention. Finally, specific applications are offered for parents, educators, social service employees, writers, advertisers, and people striving for personal well-being and healthy relationships.

Emotion is something we all talk about in everyday conversations, and studies make an implicit assumption that emotions are "out there" or "in there", somewhere in psychological reality waiting to be isolated and dissected. Brian Parkinson looks at emotion in encounters between people, expressed in gesture and movement, talk and silence. He presents a clear and concise overview of research into emotion focusing on cognitive appraisal, bodily changes, action tendencies and expressive displays. This text challenges the idea of emotion as an individual intrapsychic phenomenon, and formulates a conceptual framework based on the idea of emotion as interpersonal communication, a social practice influenced by culture and language. The book should prove valuable to all those approaching emotion from a social psychological perspective, whether at advanced undergraduate or graduate level.

Based on a conference held in honor of Professor Tarow Indow, this volume is organized into three major topics concerning the use of geometry in perception:
* space -- referring to attempts to represent the subjective space within which we locate ourselves and perceive objects to reside;
* color -- dealing with attempts to represent the structure of color percepts as revealed by various experimental procedures; and
* scaling -- focusing on the organization of various bodies of data -- in this case perceptual -- through scaling techniques, primarily multidimensional ones.
These topics provide a natural organization of the work in the field, as well as one that corresponds to the major aspects of Indow's contributions. This book's goal is to provide the reader with an overview of the issues in each of the areas, and to present current results from the laboratories of leading researchers in these areas.

Originally published in 1987, the introduction states: "the authors have successfully accomplished their program - to explain, based on physical representations, the observed relations among various parameters of wrist-pendulum oscillations. Thereby a set of new ideas and concepts, including those developed recently by the scientific school to which the authors belong, are introduced to biology. These concepts are closely related to the experimental data. This accomplishment makes the book especially attractive and demonstrates once more the productivity of applying physics to biology." "Clear language, simple figures, and physical examples illuminate rather complicated problems. These attractive features should make the book intelligible to a variety of investigators in the field of motor control, not only to the specialists with physical and mathematical education." From the foreword: " Kugler and Turvey have written strategic physical biology, and shown that, after all, dynamics (including both kinetics and kinematics) may support a unitary physical view of some of the profound operations of our brains... This is a grand start on what I hope is a larger program of demystifying behaviour."

This book describes a unique combination of research programs based on a striking variety of hypotheses and procedures directed toward understanding the sources and consequences of neurobehavioral plasticity. This remarkable attribute of the nervous system -- to be pliable and capable of being shaped or formed by natural or artificial sources toward adaptation or maladaptation -- is considered in terms of the neurochemical forces and neuroanatomical structure that has been found to be pivotal for this function. The impetus for this volume was a symposium held to honor Robert L. Isaacson for his scientific and pedagogical achievements as well as his contributions to behavioral neuroscience.
Corresponding to his three major research interests, the book is divided into three sections as follows:
* the first explores the relationship between the limbic system and behavior, with an emphasis on learning and memory;
* the second considers -- through a wide range of approaches -- issues of plasticity in behavior and brain; and
* the third deals with neural and chemical determinants of normal and abnormal behavior.
This volume is not only a fitting tribute to Isaacson, but also an unusual collection of new evidence, procedures, and theories destined to have significant influence on behavioral neuroscience.

This volume presents a state-of-the-science review of the most promising current European research -- and its historic roots of research -- on complex problem solving (CPS) in Europe. It is an attempt to close the knowledge gap among American scholars regarding the European approach to understanding CPS. Although most of the American researchers are well aware of the fact that CPS has been a very active research area in Europe for quite some time, they do not know any specifics about even the most important research. Part of the reason for this lack of knowledge is undoubtedly the fact that European researchers -- for the most part -- have been rather reluctant to publish their work in English-language journals.
The book concentrates on European research because the basic approach European scholars have taken to studying CPS is very different from one taken by North American researchers. Traditionally, American scholars have been studying CPS in "natural" domains -- physics, reading, writing, and chess playing -- concentrating primarily on exploring novice-expert differences and the acquisition of a complex skill. European scholars, in contrast, have been primarily concerned with problem solving behavior in artificially generated, mostly computerized, complex systems. While the American approach has the advantage of high external validity, the European approach has the advantage of system variables that can be systematically manipulated to reveal the effects of system parameters on CPS behavior. The two approaches are thus best viewed as complementing each other.
This volume contains contributions from four European countries -- Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain, and Germany. As such, it accurately represents the bulk of empirical research on CPS which has been conducted in Europe. An international cooperation started two years ago with the goal of bringing the European research on complex problem solving to the awareness of American scholars. A direct result of that effort, the contributions to this book are both informative and comprehensive.

Cultivation of emotional awareness is difficult, even for those of us not afflicted by serious mental illness. This book discusses the neurobiology behind emotional states and presents exercises for developing self awareness. Topics include mood (both unipolar and bipolar), anxiety (particularly PTSD), and dissociative disorders. Frewen and Lanius comprehensively review psychological and neurobiological research, and explain how to use this research to become aware of emotional states within both normal and psychopathological functioning. Therapists will be able to help survivors of trauma, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and dissociative disorders develop emotional awareness. The book also includes case studies, detailed instructions for clinicians, and handouts ready for use in assessment/therapy with patients/clients.

This monograph from a leading neuroscientist and neural networks researcher investigates and offers a fresh approach to the perplexing scientific and philosophical problems of minds and brains. It explains how brains have evolved from our earliest vertebrate ancestors. It details how brains provide the basis for successful comprehension of the environment, for the formulation of actions and prediction of their consequences, and for cooperating or competing with other beings that have brains. The book also offers observations regarding such issues as:
* how and why people fall in and out of love;
* the biological basis for experiencing feelings of love and hate; and
* how music and dance have provided the ancestral technology for forming social groups such as tribes and clans.
The author reviews the history of the mind-brain problem, and demonstrates how the new sciences of behavioral electrophysiology and nonlinear dynamics -- combined with the latest computer technology -- have made it possible for us to observe brains in action. He also provides an answer to the question: What happens to a stimulus after it enters the brain? The answer: The stimulus triggers the construction of a percept and is then washed away. All that we know is what our brains construct for us by neurodynamics. Brains are not logical devices that process information. They are dynamical systems that create meaning through interactions with the environment -- and each other.
The book shows how the learning process by which brains construct meaning tends to isolate brains into self-centered worlds, and how nature has provided a remedy -- first appearing in mammals as a mechanism for pair-bonding -- to ensure reproduction of the young dependent on parents. The remedy is based in the neurochemistry of sex which serves to dissolve belief structures in order to open the way for new patterns of understanding and behavior. Individuals experience these changes in various ways, such as falling in love, collegiate indoctrination, tribal bonding, brain washing, political or religious conversions, and related types of socialization. The highest forms of meaning for humans come through these social attachments.

For effective use, this book should be purchased alongside the illustrated picture book Harry's Story. Both books can be purchased together as a set, Supporting Children with DLD: A Picture Book and User Guide to Learn About Developmental Language Disorder [978-0-367-70920-4]. Supporting Children with DLD, has been developed to help raise awareness of Developmental Language Disorder, and to highlight the impact of the condition from the child's point of view. With activities, prompts and sample questions, this is an essential resource to enable adults to understand the reality of living with DLD, helping children feel heard and respected, as well as providing a solid foundation for tailoring support to individual needs. Drawing on specific examples from Harry's Story, the book does not assume any prior knowledge of DLD and is designed to offer the reader accessible information and practical advice, teaching as you go. This book: Highlights the link between spoken and written language, addressing the need to recognise the literary difficulties faced by children with DLD Provides practical activities and worksheets that can be used to help children express themselves and ask for help Offers strategies for supporting children's understanding of language, based on common situations and experiences explored in Harry's Story Written to be an accessible introduction to DLD and its effect on children's lives, this is an essential resource for parents and professionals looking to understand the condition.

This monograph from a leading neuroscientist and neural networks researcher investigates and offers a fresh approach to the perplexing scientific and philosophical problems of minds and brains. It explains how brains have evolved from our earliest vertebrate ancestors. It details how brains provide the basis for successful comprehension of the environment, for the formulation of actions and prediction of their consequences, and for cooperating or competing with other beings that have brains. The book also offers observations regarding such issues as:
* how and why people fall in and out of love;
* the biological basis for experiencing feelings of love and hate; and
* how music and dance have provided the ancestral technology for forming social groups such as tribes and clans.
The author reviews the history of the mind-brain problem, and demonstrates how the new sciences of behavioral electrophysiology and nonlinear dynamics -- combined with the latest computer technology -- have made it possible for us to observe brains in action. He also provides an answer to the question: What happens to a stimulus after it enters the brain? The answer: The stimulus triggers the construction of a percept and is then washed away. All that we know is what our brains construct for us by neurodynamics. Brains are not logical devices that process information. They are dynamical systems that create meaning through interactions with the environment -- and each other.
The book shows how the learning process by which brains construct meaning tends to isolate brains into self-centered worlds, and how nature has provided a remedy -- first appearing in mammals as a mechanism for pair-bonding -- to ensure reproduction of the young dependent on parents. The remedy is based in the neurochemistry of sex which serves to dissolve belief structures in order to open the way for new patterns of understanding and behavior. Individuals experience these changes in various ways, such as falling in love, collegiate indoctrination, tribal bonding, brain washing, political or religious conversions, and related types of socialization. The highest forms of meaning for humans come through these social attachments.