Author: Konrad Lorenz
Publisher: Mariner Books
ISBN: 9780156117760
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Get Book

Book Description
Lorenz examines the nature of human thought and intelligence and attributes the problems of modern civilization largely to the limitations.

Author: Giacomo Rizzolatti
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019921798X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book

Book Description
When we witness a great actor, musician, or sportsperson performing, we share something of their experience. It become clear just how this sharing of experience is realised within the human brain. This text provides an accessible overview of mirror neurons, written by the man who first discovered them.

Author: Jigar Chauhan
Publisher: Notion Press
ISBN: 1648926266
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Get Book

Book Description

Author: Michael A. Arbib
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0199896682
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Get Book

Book Description
Unlike any other species, humans can learn and use language. In this book, Michael Arbib presents the Mirror System Hypothesis, which suggests how complex imitation supported the breakthrough to pantomime, protosign and protospeech and then, through cultural evolution, to fully fledged languages.

Author: Gregory Hickok
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393244164
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Get Book

Book Description
An essential reconsideration of one of the most far-reaching theories in modern neuroscience and psychology. In 1992, a group of neuroscientists from Parma, Italy, reported a new class of brain cells discovered in the motor cortex of the macaque monkey. These cells, later dubbed mirror neurons, responded equally well during the monkey’s own motor actions, such as grabbing an object, and while the monkey watched someone else perform similar motor actions. Researchers speculated that the neurons allowed the monkey to understand others by simulating their actions in its own brain. Mirror neurons soon jumped species and took human neuroscience and psychology by storm. In the late 1990s theorists showed how the cells provided an elegantly simple new way to explain the evolution of language, the development of human empathy, and the neural foundation of autism. In the years that followed, a stream of scientific studies implicated mirror neurons in everything from schizophrenia and drug abuse to sexual orientation and contagious yawning. In The Myth of Mirror Neurons, neuroscientist Gregory Hickok reexamines the mirror neuron story and finds that it is built on a tenuous foundation—a pair of codependent assumptions about mirror neuron activity and human understanding. Drawing on a broad range of observations from work on animal behavior, modern neuroimaging, neurological disorders, and more, Hickok argues that the foundational assumptions fall flat in light of the facts. He then explores alternative explanations of mirror neuron function while illuminating crucial questions about human cognition and brain function: Why do humans imitate so prodigiously? How different are the left and right hemispheres of the brain? Why do we have two visual systems? Do we need to be able to talk to understand speech? What’s going wrong in autism? Can humans read minds? The Myth of Mirror Neurons not only delivers an instructive tale about the course of scientific progress—from discovery to theory to revision—but also provides deep insights into the organization and function of the human brain and the nature of communication and cognition.

Author: Christian Keysers
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9781138877818
Category : Cognitive neuroscience
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book

Book Description
Mirror neurons are premotor neurons, originally discovered in the macaque brain , that discharge both during execution of goal-directed actions and during the observation of similar actions executed by another individual. They therefore ¿mirror¿ others¿ actions on the observer's motor repertoire. In the last decade an impressive amount of work has been devoted to the study of their properties and to investigate if they are present also in our species. Neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques have shown that a mirror-neuron system does exist in the human brain as well. Among ¿mirror¿ human areas, Broca¿s area (the frontal area for speech production) is almost constantly activated by action observation. This suggests a possible evolutionary link between action understanding and verbal communication. In the most recent years, mirror-like phenomena have been demonstrated also for domains others than the pure motor one. Examples of that are the somatosensory and the emotional systems, possibly providing a neurophysiological basis to phenomena such as embodiment and empathy. This special issue collects some of the most representative works on the mirror-neuron system to give a panoramic view on current research and to stimulate new experiments in this exciting field.

Author: Sandra Hart
Publisher: Sandra Hart
ISBN: 9780971552500
Category : Schizophrenics
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book

Book Description
Former Romper Room Teacher and Anchorwoman Sandra Hart has written her powerful memoir - a story of betrayal, murder and survival revolving around schizophrenia. A visually rich journey begins with the author's childhood in a gloomy Ohio Valley steel town and follows her through her early career on Romper Room and then her final investigation into the disappearance of her ex-husband. Surviving an early life-threatening illness, Sandra finally finds happiness in adulthood only to discover that her utopian life is a mirage. A confident personality in front of the camera, few knew that behind the scenes she was fearful of a stalker intent on destroying her. It is a searing story of a woman who leads a double life. Her public persona was that of a successful television personality, but her private life was one of personal pain and constant terror. "A compassionate kaleidoscope of events of a life as it is."- Janice Lieberman, NBC-TV. "A suspensful and compelling love story in which both the reader and author are spectators in an awesome discovery." - M. Cohen. Major credit cards accepted. Toll-free 1-866-294-9063, e-mail: [email protected], or myartisansway.com. Distributor/Wholesaler: Baker and Taylor.

Author: Tara Well
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
ISBN: 168403969X
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book

Book Description
Discover the power of mirror meditation to help you awaken self-compassion, increase self-awareness, and gain the confidence needed to thrive. Seeing ourselves clearly isn’t always easy—especially in the age of social media. Technology has eroded our capacity for authentic self-reflection. As a result, we feel more anxious and depressed, have shorter attention spans, and have become more estranged from ourselves and each other. We’ve also become more critical of our physical appearance, and this self-criticism can damage our confidence and stand in the way of our happiness. In order to heal, we must come face to face with our true selves—not the images of ourselves that we alter and post online. If you're ready for self-reflection that has nothing to do with selfies, this book will reveal the way. Based in cutting-edge neuroscience, Mirror Meditation offers mindful practices for increasing your self-awareness, managing stress and emotions, developing self-compassion, and increasing your confidence and personal presence. Using the three principles of mindfulness meditation—attention to the present moment, open awareness, and kind intention toward oneself—you’ll realize just how much your self-criticisms are affecting you. Then you’ll have a choice—and a practice—to treat yourself with more self-acceptance. Self-awareness can help you break free from both your inner critic and the external world that stokes the fears and anxieties that we are never good enough, never have enough, and are never safe enough. The simple self-mirroring technique in this unique guide isn’t grounded in technology—just a commitment to be present with yourself.

Author: Rodolphe Gasché
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674867017
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Get Book

Book Description
Deconstruction is no game of mirrors, revealing the text as a play of surface against surface. Its more radical philosophical effort is to get behind the mirror and question the very nature of reflection. The Tain of the Mirror explores that gritty surface without which no reflection would be possible.

Author: Katja Guenther
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691237255
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book

Book Description
How the classic mirror test served as a portal for scientists to explore questions of self-awareness Since the late eighteenth century, scientists have placed subjects—humans, infants, animals, and robots—in front of mirrors in order to look for signs of self-recognition. Mirrors served as the possible means for answering the question: What makes us human? In The Mirror and the Mind, Katja Guenther traces the history of the mirror self-recognition test, exploring how researchers from a range of disciplines—psychoanalysis, psychiatry, developmental and animal psychology, cybernetics, anthropology, and neuroscience—came to read the peculiar behaviors elicited by mirrors. Investigating the ways mirrors could lead to both identification and misidentification, Guenther looks at how such experiments ultimately failed to determine human specificity. The mirror test was thrust into the limelight when Charles Darwin challenged the idea that language sets humans apart. Thereafter the mirror, previously a recurrent if marginal scientific tool, became dominant in attempts to demarcate humans from other animals. But because researchers could not rely on language to determine what their nonspeaking subjects were experiencing, they had to come up with significant innovations, including notation strategies, testing protocols, and the linking of scientific theories across disciplines. From the robotic tortoises of Grey Walter and the mark test of Beulah Amsterdam and Gordon Gallup, to anorexia research and mirror neurons, the mirror test offers a window into the emergence of such fields as biology, psychology, psychiatry, animal studies, cognitive science, and neuroscience. The Mirror and the Mind offers an intriguing history of experiments in self-awareness and the advancements of the human sciences across more than a century.