This volume describes how the conceptual and technical sophistication of contemporary cognitive and neuroscientific fields has enhanced the neurocognitive understanding of dreaming sleep. Because it is the only naturally-occurring state in which the active brain produces elaborate cognitive processes in the absence of sensory input, the study of dreaming offers a unique cognitive and neurophysiological view of the production of higher cognitive processes. The theory and research included is driven by the search for the most direct relationships linking the neurophysiological characteristics of sleepers to their concurrent cognitive experiences. The search is organized around three sets of theoretical models and the three classes of neurocognitive relationships upon which they are based. The contributions to this volume demonstrate that the field has begun to move in new directions opened up by the rapid advances in contemporary cognitive science, neuropsychology, and neurophysiology.

This research monograph describes a large programming project in which an underwater organism, capable of perceiving, learning, deciding, and navigating, is computationally simulated. The developed computational model serves as a contemporary theory of perceptual-motor performance, embodying much of what is known about human vision and some of what is known about other cognitive processes. This artificial intelligence project has substantial contributions to make to the development of autonomous underwater vehicles. It also makes a specific theoretical statement about the organization and nature of organic perceptual motor systems that may be useful to psychologists, neuroscientists, and theoreticians in a number of other fields.

Trust is essential for establishing and maintaining cooperative behaviors between individuals and institutions in a wide variety of social, economic, and political contexts. This book explores trust through the lens of neurobiology, focusing on empirical, methodological, and theoretical aspects. Written by a distinguished group of researchers from economics, psychology, human factors, neuroscience, and psychiatry, the chapters shed light on the neurobiological underpinnings of trust as applied in a variety of domains. Researchers and students will discover a refined understanding of trust by delving into the essential topics in this area of study outlined by leading experts.

Based on an ethnographic study conducted in a Greek community, this book celebrates the small ways people teach and learn while they are engaged in other, supposedly more important, activities. By examining the intricate ways in which knowledge and skills of everyday life are transmitted, it shows how family, community, and culture shape the cognitive world of learners. Beginning with a rich description of the community and its culture, the book then focuses on six contrasting episodes of informal instruction. Video and audiotaped scenes of learning to dance, learning to perform the healing art of cupping, and learning about kinship, for example, provide material for detailed analyses. The book demonstrates the interplay of culture and learning by exploring how the cultural theme of struggle and the use of different interpretive frames shaped informal instruction in this community and how, at the same time, processes of informal teaching and learning contributed to the evolving construction of culture by its members. Interpretive framing emerges as a key concept that studies of situated cognition must consider. Since formal and informal instruction are closely linked, the culturally specific ways of teaching and learning shown in informal instruction will help all educators meet the needs of diverse student bodies.

The articles gathered in this volume represent examples of a unique approach to the study of mental phenomena: a blend of theory and experiment, informed not just by easily measurable laboratory data but also by human introspection. Subjects such as approach and avoidance, desire and fear, and novelty and habit are studied as natural events that may not exactly correspond to, but at least correlate with, some (known or unknown) electrical and chemical events in the brain.

This volume introduces the concepts of income and optimal choice to the realms of brain activity and behavior regulation. It begins by developing the concept of the Income-Choice approach in the field of biological control systems, then deals with the problems of control of brain activity, and finally presents a model of behavior disturbance based on the idea that its cause is a definite and simple change in the income system of the organism. Other areas to which the proposed Income-Choice approach could be applied are also addressed including the origin of the epileptic aura and why it is a predictor of the imminent attack, the mechanism of the phenomena of "personality switching" in schizophrenics, and the possible connection between schizophrenic- like symptoms and epileptic status. Written nearly 20 years ago in Russia and now published in the West, this book will be of value to many professionals in related fields. This volume introduces the concepts of income and optimal choice to the realm of brain activity and behavior regulation. It begins by developing the concept of the Income-Choice approach in the field of biological control systems, then deals with the problems of control of brain activity, and finally presents a model of behavior disturbance based on the idea that its cause is a definite and simple change in the income system of the organism. Other areas to which the proposed Income-Choice approach could be applied are also addressed, including the origin of the epileptic aura and why it is a predictor of the would-be attack, the mechanism of the phenomena of "personality switching" in schizophrenics, and the possible connection between schizophrenic- like symptoms andepileptic status. Originally written nearly 20 years ago in Russia and now published for the first time in the West, this book will be of value to many professionals in related fields.

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Research on clinical populations and studies of normal individuals support the conclusion that there are functional differences between the cerebral hemispheres. This book captures some of the major developments in the field of cerebral laterality research of the last five years. These include lateralization in non-human primates, computational models of hemispheric processing, hemispheric transfer and interaction, perceptual asymmetries, techniques to measure dynamic changes in hemispheric processing of information, and new conceptualizations of the relation between handedness and cerebral laterality. The topics discussed exhibit an interconnectedness such that the approaches and techniques used in one area of cerebral laterality research have implications for research in other disciplines. They also reflect changes in the conceptualization of general theoretical issues regarding cerebral laterality research.

This book presents studies of self-motion by an international group of basic and applied researchers including biologists, psychologists, comparative physiologists, kinesiologists, aerospace and control engineers, physicians, and physicists. Academia is well represented and accounts for most of the applied research offered. Basic theoretical research is further represented by private research companies and also by government laboratories on both sides of the Atlantic. Researchers and students of biology, psychology, physiology, kinesiology, engineering, and physics who have an interest in self-motion -- whether it be underwater, in space, or on solid ground -- will find this volume of interest. This book presents studies of self-motion by an international group of basic and applied researchers including biologists, psychologists, comparative physiologists, kinesiologists, aerospace and control engineers, physicians, and physicists. Academia is well represented and accounts for most of the applied research offered. Basic theoretical research is further represented by private research companies and also by government laboratories on both sides of the Atlantic. Researchers and students of biology, psychology, physiology, kinesiology, engineering, and physics who have an interest in self-motion -- whether it be underwater, in space, or on solid ground -- will find this volume of interest.

Providing a personal overview of hemispheric differences in human cognitive activity, Professor Efron is selective in his presentation of significant issues. To ensure a balanced overview, references are made to many books, review articles, and research reports that present opposing positions. Although additional material has been included in this book, the informal style of the oral presentation has not been altered. This volume may be perceived as a report of one man's opinion; however, the conclusions may reflect the views of a "silent majority" of cognitive neuroscientists.

This book presents studies of self-motion by an international group of basic and applied researchers including biologists, psychologists, comparative physiologists, kinesiologists, aerospace and control engineers, physicians, and physicists. Academia is well represented and accounts for most of the applied research offered. Basic theoretical research is further represented by private research companies and also by government laboratories on both sides of the Atlantic. Researchers and students of biology, psychology, physiology, kinesiology, engineering, and physics who have an interest in self-motion -- whether it be underwater, in space, or on solid ground -- will find this volume of interest. This book presents studies of self-motion by an international group of basic and applied researchers including biologists, psychologists, comparative physiologists, kinesiologists, aerospace and control engineers, physicians, and physicists. Academia is well represented and accounts for most of the applied research offered. Basic theoretical research is further represented by private research companies and also by government laboratories on both sides of the Atlantic. Researchers and students of biology, psychology, physiology, kinesiology, engineering, and physics who have an interest in self-motion -- whether it be underwater, in space, or on solid ground -- will find this volume of interest.

Despite all our highly publicized efforts to improve our schools, the United States is still falling behind. We recently ranked 15th in the world in reading, math, and science. Clearly, more needs to be done. In The Learning Brain, Torkel Klingberg urges us to use the insights of neuroscience to improve the education of our children. The key to improving education lies in understanding how the brain works: that is where learning takes place, after all. The book focuses in particular on "working memory"--our ability to concentrate and to keep relevant information in our head while ignoring distractions (a topic the author covered in The Overflowing Brain). Research shows enormous variation in working memory among children, with some ten-year-olds performing at the level of a fourteen-year old, others at that of a six-year old. More important, children with high working memory have better math and reading skills, while children with poor working memory consistently underperform. Interestingly, teachers tend to perceive children with poor working memory as dreamy or unfocused, not recognizing that these children have a memory problem. But what can we do for these children? For one, we can train working memory. The Learning Brain provides a variety of different techniques and scientific insights that may just teach us how to improve our children's working memory. Klingberg also discusses how stress can impair working memory (skydivers tested just before a jump showed a 30% drop in working memory) and how aerobic exercise can actually modify the brain's nerve cells and improve classroom performance. Torkel Klingberg is one of the world's leading cognitive neuroscientists, but in this book he wears his erudition lightly, writing with simplicity and good humor as he shows us how to give our children the best chance to learn and grow.

This detailed look at the development of microgenetic theory provides a comprehensive and coherent model of cognitive processing in the brain, based on patterns of breakdown in pathology. In so doing, it illustrates the clinical record that supports and documents microgenetic theory, and presents a basis for future work in the study of the brain. Coverage includes topics in language and dominance, the function of the right hemisphere, action, perception, memory, and the concept of time.

First Published in 1988. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Linguistic Morphology is a unique collection of cutting-edge research in the psycholinguistics of morphology, offering a comprehensive overview of this interdisciplinary field. This book brings together world-leading experts from linguisics, experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience to examine morphology research from different disciplines. It provides an overview of how the brain deals with complex words; examining how they are easier to read, how they affect our brain dynamics and eye movements, how they mould the acquisition of language and literacy, and how they inform computational models of the linguistic brain. Chapters discuss topics ranging from subconscious visual identification to the high-level processing of sentences, how children make their first steps with complex words through to how proficient adults make lexical identification in less than 40 milliseconds. As a state-of-the-art resource in morphology research, this book will be highly relevant reading for students and researchers of linguistics, psychology and cognitive neuroscience. It will also act as a one-stop shop for experts in the field.

The problem of development is central in the study of emotional life for two basic reasons. First, emotional life so clearly changes (dramatically in the early years) with new emotional reactions emerging against the backdrop of an increasing sensitivity to context and with self-regulation of emotion emerging from a striking dependence on regulatory assistance from caregivers. Such changes demand developmental analysis. At the same time, understanding such profound changes will surely inform our understanding of the nature of development more generally. The complexity of emotional change, when grasped, will reveal the elusive nature of development itself. At the outset, we know that development is complex. We must take seriously what is present at any given phase, including the newborn period, because a developmental analysis disallows something emerging from noth ing. Still, it is equally nondevelopmental to posit that new forms of new processes were simply present in their precursors. Rather, development is characterized by transformations in which more complex structures and organization "emerge" from new integration of prior components and new capacities. These new forms and organizations cannot be specified from prior conditions but are due to transactions of the evolving organism with its environment over time. They are not simply in the genome, and they are not simply conditioned by the environment. They are the result of the develop mental process."

First Published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book is the first to offer an overview of the increasingly studied field of face perception. Experimental and pathological dissociation methods are used to understand both the precise cognitive mechanisms and the cerebral functions involved in face perception. Three main areas of investigation are discussed: face processing after brain damage; lateral differences for face processing in normals; neuropsychological studies on facial expressions.

The central focus of this work is that partners entrance one another into enmeshed bonding through the euphoric idealization of perfect love. This idealization is found to serve as a hypnotic allure which, by its sheer luster, blinds partners to its perilous powers of manifest magnetism. The stages of hypnotic entrancement are delineated, starting with fantasy fixation of perfect love and its eventual demise.

Partners entrance one another into enmeshed bonding through the euphoric idealization of perfect love. This idealization is found to serve as a hypnotic allure which, by its sheer luster, blinds partners to its perilous powers of manifest magnetism. The stages of hypnotic entrancement are delineated, starting with fantasy fixation of perfect love and its eventual demise. The essential premise describes the addictive enmeshment as the result of consciously irresistible hypnotic pulls from entrancement, which involves a coming together or fusion of idealized images superimposed upon physical attributes of one's partner. Partners merge their ideal images of love and beauty with the size, shape, contour, etc. of their mates, creating the entrancing, whirlwind addiction.

Numerous case examples are utilized in demonstrating a four-stage parallel between addictive bonds and hypnosis. Reawakening is described as coming of (en)trance(ment). Genuine awakening is the emergence of innate, artistic motifs inherent in partners, which can bring empowerment and recovery. This book is recommended for both academic and professional readers.

Some of our time is spent eating and drinking and some is spent on matters regarding reproduction. Some of us seek fame or recognition while others seek satisfaction internally, with little need for recognition. Some people study for success in a profession, while others might study rocks, birds, or French literature for no apparent reason other than to know about it. Why are we motivated to engage in so many apparently unrelated activities? This book places our various activities into categories, thus providing a framework for understanding how everything that we do fits together and is based on brain mechanisms. Disturbances in motivation play important roles in autism, depression, Parkinson's disease, and addiction. Understanding the motivational aspects of these disorders can help to inform our approach to these conditions. This book may be of value for students in psychology, counseling, management, and anyone who is interested in understanding our daily behavior.

For 31 years, Progress in Psychobiology and Physiological Psychology has provided cutting-edge literature to behavioral neuroscience research. Volume 18 includes four original chapters covering a broad range of contemporary topics in behavioral neuroscience. In the first of these, Alan Rosenwasser skillfully reviews the current status of the rapidly developing field of circadian neurobiology. He focuses on the mammalian suprachiasmatic nucleus system emphasizing inputs to the "clock," their neurochemical phenotype, and outputs from the "clock" to behavioral and other effector systems. Another virtue of this chapter is its integration of current data and organizing principles drawn from the analysis of non-vertebrates species and cellular system. Next, Lori Flanagan-Cato??'s essay focuses on the neuroendocrine controls of female reproductive behavior in the rat. She first reviews research from her own laboratory that utilizes pseudo-rabies viral tract tracing to identify pathways from the VMH through the periaqueductal gray, medullary reticulospinal and terminating on motor neurons in lumbar ventral horn that innervate the female flank muscles. She then goes on to describe more recent experiments suggesting that estrogen may modulate the synaptic strength of this circuit by controlling dendritic spines on neurons intrinsic to the VMH, as well as those that project to lordosis relevant brain circuitry. The elucidation of these estrogen-induced changes within a defined neural circuit emphasizes why the study of lordosis continues to be one of the best models to investigate hormones and their effects on behavior.
The last few years have witnessed unprecedented advances in ourunderstanding of the neurobiological controls of feeding behavior. This period of rapid discovery was ushered in by the identification of leptin as an adiposity hormone that acts in the brain to control food intake and energy expenditure commensurate with fat stores. Since its discovery by Friedman and colleagues in 1995, progress has been swift in identifying the many neurochemical systems in brain that are regulated by leptin. Almost all of this research has focused on the final common path of ingestion, food consumption during a meal. However, as Tim Bartness points out in his chapter, the long term regulation of food intake and energy homeostasis is a much richer landscape involving many adaptive changes in food searching strategies and storage. Finally, the development of strategies for unraveling the taste sensory code is at the heart of Alan Spector's contribution. He and his associates employ a research strategy that combines psychophysical analysis of taste-guided behavior with selective gustatory receptive field denervation to investigate the hypothesis that taste nerves innervate functionally specialized populations of taste receptors. Spector reviews a fascinating set of findings from his laboratory and integrates these results with current information on taste receptors, taste systems neuroscience, neural development and recovery of function.
Volume 18 is the last volume to be published in this serial.

'Bored and Brilliant is full of easy steps to make each day more effective' Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit It's time to move `doing nothing' to the top of your to-do list Have you ever noticed how you have your best ideas when doing the dishes or staring out the window? It's because when your body goes on autopilot, your brain gets busy connecting ideas and solving problems. However in the modern world it often feels as though we have completely removed boredom from our lives; we are addicted to our phones, we reply to our emails twenty-four hours a day, tweet as we watch TV, watch TV as we commute, check Facebook as we walk and Instagram while we eat. Constant stimulation has become our default mode. In this easy to follow, practical book, award-winning journalist Manoush Zomorodi explores the connection between boredom and original thinking, and will show you how to ditch your screens and start embracing time spent doing nothing. Bored and Brilliant will help you unlock the way to becoming your most productive and creative self.

Individuals from diverse disciplines, including neurology, physiology, psychology, mathematics, and engineering have contributed to this volume. Their scientific investigations of volitional action are part of the resurgence of interest in the psychology and physiology of volition which has taken place in recent years. The book comprises a significant sample of their observations, both rational and empirical, which have new practical implications for our understanding of human conduct. The book was designed to serve a threefold purpose: a) to consolidate the gains of the various scholars, relatively isolated in their respective disciplines, b) to foster and help focus future research on conation and self-control and c) to provide practitioners in applied psychology with a broad-based tutorial.

Freedom of thought is one of the great and venerable notions of Western thought, often celebrated in philosophical texts - and described as a crucial right in American, European, and International Law, and in that of other jurisdictions. What it means more precisely is, however, anything but clear; surprisingly little writing has been devoted to it. In the past, perhaps, there has been little need for such elaboration. As one Supreme Court Justice stressed, "[f]reedom to think is absolute of its own nature" because even "the most tyrannical government is powerless to control the inward workings of the mind." But the rise of brain scanning, cognition enhancement, and other emerging technologies make this question a more pressing one. This volume provides an interdisciplinary exploration of how freedom of thought might function as an ethical principle and as a constitutional or human right. It draws on philosophy, legal analysis, history, and reflections on neuroscience and neurotechnology to explore what respect for freedom of thought (or an individual's cognitive liberty or autonomy) requires.

This book focuses on the emergence of creative ideas from cognitive and social dynamics. In particular, it presents data, models, and analytical methods grounded in a network dynamics approach. It has long been hypothesized that innovation arises from a recombination of older ideas and concepts, but this has been studied primarily at an abstract level. In this book, we consider the networks underlying innovation - from the brain networks supporting semantic cognition to human networks such as brainstorming groups or individuals interacting through social networks - and relate the emergence of ideas to the structure and dynamics of these networks. Methods described include experimental studies with human participants, mathematical evaluation of novelty from group brainstorming experiments, neurodynamical modeling of conceptual combination, and multi-agent modeling of collective creativity. The main distinctive features of this book are the breadth of perspectives considered, the integration of experiments with theory, and a focus on the combinatorial emergence of ideas.