The problem of how the brain produces consciousness, subjectivity and 'something it is like to be' remains one of the greatest challenges to a complete science of the natural world. While various scientists and philosophers approach the problem from their own unique perspectives and in the terms of their own respective fields, Biophysics of Consciousness: A Foundational Approach attempts a consilience across disparate disciplines to explain how it is possible that an objective brain produces subjective experience.This volume unites the creme de la creme of physicists, neuroscientists, and psychiatrists in the attempt to understand consciousness through a foundational approach encompassing ontological, evolutionary, neurobiological, and Freudian interpretations with the focus on conscious phenomena occurring in the brain. By integrating the perspectives of these diverse disciplines with the latest research and theories on the biophysics of the brain, the book tries to explain how consciousness can be an adaptive and causal element in the natural world.

The Lost Self: Pathologies of the Brain and Identity is an in-depth exploration of one of the most mysterious and controversial topics in neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry and psychology-namely, the search for the biological basis of the self. The book is a guide to understanding how the brain creates who we are, and what happens when things go wrong. For the first time in a single volume, some of the foremost experts in the fields of philosophy, cognitive neuroscience, neurology, and psychology join together to explore the neurobiology of the self. They first lay the foundation for an understanding of the topic. Then they provide fascinating and detailed accounts of how the self is transformed in patients with brain lesions, autism, and dementia, as well as in drug induced states, during meditation, and while dreaming. Their analysis of these disorders and states is used as a springboard toward a deeper understanding of how a brain creates a self. This fascinating volume will be invaluable to neuroscientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, and philosophers of mind, and to their students and trainees.

One of the great "unsolved mysteries" is how the brain creates the subjective sense of a unifies self. In Altered Egos Feinberg, a psychiatrist and neurologist, addresses this question by considering how the human brain functions--and malfunctions--in patients with neurological perturbations of the self. He goes on to present a new theory of the self that links the brain with unique characteristics of the mind, such as meaning, purpose, and being. He explains why the self and the mind are uniquely personal constituents of the life of the individual.

Demystifying consciousness: how subjective experience can be explained by natural brain and evolutionary processes. Consciousness is often considered a mystery. How can the seemingly immaterial experience of consciousness be explained by the material neurons of the brain? There seems to be an unbridgeable gap between understanding the brain as an objectively observed biological organ and accounting for the subjective experiences that come from the brain (and life processes). In this book, Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt attempt to demystify consciousness-to naturalize it, by explaining that the subjective, experiencing aspects of consciousness are created by natural brain processes that evolved in natural ways. Although subjective experience is unique in nature, they argue, it is not necessarily mysterious. We need not invoke the unknown or unknowable to explain its creation. Feinberg and Mallatt flesh out their theory of neurobiological naturalism (after John Searle's biological naturalism) that recognizes the many features that brains share with other living things, lists the neural features unique to conscious brains, and explains the subjective-objective barrier naturally. They investigate common neural features among the diverse groups of animals that have primary consciousness-the type of consciousness that experiences both sensations received from the world and affects such as emotions. They map the evolutionary development of consciousness and find an uninterrupted progression over time, without inserting any mysterious forces or exotic physics. Finally, bridging the previously unbridgeable, they show how subjective experience, although different from objective observation, can be naturally explained.