Sherrington's Loom

Sherrington's Loom PDF Author: Alan J. McComas
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190936541
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
How does the brain create consciousness? How is it that we have a sense of self; a self that can identify thousands of people, places, objects, words, and musical melodies? While the ultimate challenge--that of transforming electrical impulses in nerve cells into sensations, thoughts, and actions--remains a mystery, there is a great deal that is now known about the way the brain functions. Further, that knowledge is increasing through the use of ever more powerful experimental methods. Sherrington's Loom brings the key information together by blending crucial historical discoveries with more recent findings in the laboratory and neurological clinic. This book is a "must-have" for anyone interested in the history of medicine and science, and who is eager for insights as to how the conscious brain may work.

Sherrington's Loom

Sherrington's Loom PDF Author: Alan J. McComas
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190936541
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
How does the brain create consciousness? How is it that we have a sense of self; a self that can identify thousands of people, places, objects, words, and musical melodies? While the ultimate challenge--that of transforming electrical impulses in nerve cells into sensations, thoughts, and actions--remains a mystery, there is a great deal that is now known about the way the brain functions. Further, that knowledge is increasing through the use of ever more powerful experimental methods. Sherrington's Loom brings the key information together by blending crucial historical discoveries with more recent findings in the laboratory and neurological clinic. This book is a "must-have" for anyone interested in the history of medicine and science, and who is eager for insights as to how the conscious brain may work.

Brainmedia

Brainmedia PDF Author: Flora Lysen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501378732
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
Will we ever be able to see the brain at work? Could it be possible to observe thinking and feeling as if watching a live broadcast from within the human head? Brainmedia uncovers past and present examples of scientists and science educators who conceptualize and demonstrate the active human brain guided by new media technologies. Drawing on original archival material, Brainmedia outlines a new history of “live brains,” arguing that practices of - and ideas about - mediation impacted the imagination of seeing the brain at work. Through five carefully researched and illustrated historical case studies, Flora Lysen shows the conceptual but also practical assembling of brains and media: from exhibitions of giant illuminated brain models and staged projections of brainwave recordings; to live televised brain broadcasts, brains hooked up to computers and experiments with “brain-to-brain” synchronization. By combining accounts of scientists examining brains in laboratories with examples of public demonstrations and exhibitions of brain research, Brainmedia casts new light on popularization practices, placing them at the heart of scientific work. The book argues that a vital part of brain research is the performing of knowledge with and through media. This means that the significance attributed to neuroscientific research today also much depends on the changing forms of fascination that ultimately allow for the persistence of promises of seeing the live brain at work.

Enchanted Looms

Enchanted Looms PDF Author: Rodney Cotterill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521794626
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 534

Get Book Here

Book Description
This beautifully written 1998 book examining consciousness, and which received high praise in the reviews, is now available in paperback.

Chasing Men on Fire

Chasing Men on Fire PDF Author: Stephen G. Waxman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262037408
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
A thirty-year quest, from genes to pain-signaling neurons to people with a rare genetic disorder that makes them feel they are on fire. Two soldiers, both with wounds injuring the same nerve, show very different responses: one is disabled by neuropathic pain, unable to touch the injured limb because even the lightest contact triggers excruciating discomfort; the other notices numbness but no pain at all. Could the difference lie in their genes? In this book, described in the foreword by Nobel Laureate James Rothman as “so well written that it reads like a detective novel,” Stephen Waxman recounts the search for a gene that controls pain—a search spanning more than thirty years and three continents. The story moves from genes to pain-signaling neurons that scream when they should be silent to people with a rare genetic disorder who feel they are on fire. Waxman explains that if pain-signaling neurons are injured by trauma or disease, they can become hyperactive and send pain signals to the brain even without external stimulus. Studying the hyperactive mutant pain gene in man on fire syndrome has pointed the way to molecules that produce pain more broadly within the general population, in the rest of us. Waxman's account of the many steps that led to discovery of the pain gene tells the story behind the science, of how science happens.

Aranzio's Seahorse and the Search for Memory and Consciousness

Aranzio's Seahorse and the Search for Memory and Consciousness PDF Author: Alan J. McComas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192868241
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the final volume of his historical neuroscience trilogy, prize-winning author Alan J. McComas recounts the research that led to recognition of the hippocampus, a structure deep within the brain, as being primarily responsible for memory. This intriguing and exciting account includes observations on patients with memory loss as well as insights from ingenious laboratory experiments. Using several arguments in support, McComas suggests that it is the electrical impulse activity of neurons in the hippocampus that creates consciousness and that the latter is, in fact, the ever-changing sequence of short-term memories. He show us how a deeper knowledge of the hippocampus can help us develop a fuller understanding of Alzheimer's disease and other disorders of memory and behaviour, including 'long COVID. Lavishly illustrated, Aranzio's Seahorse will be of value not only to neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers but to all those interested in the workings of the brain and in the history of its exploration.

The Consciousness Instinct

The Consciousness Instinct PDF Author: Michael S. Gazzaniga
Publisher:
ISBN: 0374715505
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 287

Get Book Here

Book Description
"How do neurons turn into minds? How does physical 'stuff'―atoms, molecules, chemicals, and cells―create the vivid and various worlds inside our heads? The problem of consciousness has gnawed at us for millennia. In the last century there have been massive breakthroughs that have rewritten the science of the brain, and yet the puzzles faced by the ancient Greeks are still present. [This book] puts the latest research in conversation with the history of human thinking about the mind, giving a big-picture view of what science has revealed about consciousness. The idea of the brain as a machine, first proposed centuries ago, has led to assumptions about the relationship between mind and brain that dog scientists and philosophers to this day. [The author] asserts that this model has it backward―brains make machines, but they cannot be reduced to one. New research suggests the brain is actually a confederation of independent modules working together. Understanding how consciousness could emanate from such an organization will help define the future of brain science and artificial intelligence, and close the gap between brain and mind."--

Within Reason

Within Reason PDF Author: Donald Calne
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030749330X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book Here

Book Description
It has long been a central conviction of western humanistic thought that reason is the most godlike of human traits, and that it makes us unique among animals. Yet if reason directs what we do, why is human behavior so often violent, irrational and disastrous? In Within Reason, leading neurologist Donald B. Calne investigates the phenomenon of rationality from an astonishingly wide array of scientific, sociological, and philosophical perspectives--and shows that although reason evolved as a crucial tool for human survival, it is an aspect of mind and brain which has no inherent moral or spiritual qualities and one whose relationship to our thoughts and actions may not be as central as we want to believe. Learned, lucid, and always illuminating, Within Reason brings together the latest developments in the science of mind with some of the most enduring questions of Western thought.

Mind and Brain

Mind and Brain PDF Author: William R. Uttal
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026201596X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 526

Get Book Here

Book Description
The search for mind-brain relationships, with a particular emphasis on distinguishing hyperbole from solid empirical results in brain imaging studies. Cognitive neuroscience explores the relationship between our minds and our brains, most recently by drawing on brain imaging techniques to align neural mechanisms with psychological processes. In Mind and Brain, William Uttal offers a critical review of cognitive neuroscience, examining both its history and modern developments in the field. He pays particular attention to the role of brain imaging--especially functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)--in studying the mind-brain relationship. He argues that, despite the explosive growth of this new mode of research, there has been more hyperbole than critical analysis of what experimental outcomes really mean. With Mind and Brain, Uttal attempts a synoptic synthesis of this substantial body of scientific literature. Uttal considers psychological and behavioral concerns that can help guide the neuroscientific discussion; work done before the advent of imaging systems; and what brain imaging has brought to recent research. Cognitive neuroscience, Uttal argues, is truly both cognitive and neuroscientific. Both approaches are necessary and neither is sufficient to make sense of the greatest scientific issue of all: how the brain makes the mind.

Vital Models

Vital Models PDF Author:
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128125586
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book Here

Book Description
The use of models has been important to the historical and contemporary study of the human brain, yet very little study by social scientists has been dedicated to how the brain sciences develop and use models to better understand what brains are and how they work, including the complex entanglements between brains, bodies and their environments. Vital Models: The Making and Use of Models in the Brain Sciences explores the history and use of brain models from clinical psychiatry to psychopharmacology and cybernetics, as well as developments in digital brain modeling, simulation, imaging and connectomics. This timely volume helps both scientists and students better understand the variety, strengths, weaknesses and applicability of models in neuroscience. - Presents a timely update on the topic of brain research and modeling techniques - Contains sections from true authorities in the field

Key Thinkers in Neuroscience

Key Thinkers in Neuroscience PDF Author: Andy Wickens
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351271024
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book Here

Book Description
Key Thinkers in Neuroscience provides insight into the life and work of some of the most significant minds that have shaped the field. Studies of the human brain have been varied and complex, and the field is rich in pioneers whose endeavours have broken new ground in neuroscience. Adopting a chronological and multi-disciplinary approach to each Key Thinker, the book highlights their extraordinary contributions to neuroscience. Beginning with Santiago Ramon y Cajal and finishing with the philosophers Patricia Churchland and Paul Churchland, this book provides a comprehensive look at the new ideas and discoveries that have shaped neuroscientific research and practice, and the people that have been invaluable to this field. This book will be an indispensable companion for all students of neuroscience and the history of psychology, as well as anyone interested in how we have built our knowledge of the brain.