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1
Mildred, Haipt, ed. Thinking with the whole brain: An integrative teaching/learning model (K-8). Washington, D.C: National Education Association, 1986.
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2
Guillery, Ray. Starting to study the brain. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198806738.003.0005.
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Chapter 5 takes a look at some of the basic assumptions, questions, rules, laws, and dogmas that we encounter, use, or ignore when we study the brain. As a student, I was taught to study the brain as a functional part of a whole animal, and the nervous system as a part of biology. I was introduced to the ‘neuron doctrine’, which was applied specifically to studies of the brain. I became aware of its strengths and gradually learnt its weaknesses. I learnt the difference between descriptive science and science as a hypothetico-deductive system, and began to see myself as a descriptive scientist looking for areas of the unknown still needing to be explored. I have used this chapter to illustrate, that for the most complex parts of the brain, the rules that are useful where we know and understand many details are often irrelevant or confused where, as for the thalamus and cortex, we know only a few of the relevant details. This book has been written about areas where we often lack such details, where crucial questions have not been asked because they did not arise under the standard perception-to-action model. New questions become relevant under the interactive view, providing opportunities for many new, needed descriptive studies.
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Verschure, Paul F. M. J. The architecture of mind and brain. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199674923.003.0035.
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The components of a Living Machine must be integrated into a functioning whole, which requires a detailed understanding of the architecture of living machines. This chapter starts with a conceptual and historical analysis which from Plato brings us to nineteenth-century neuroscience and early concepts of the layered structure of nervous systems. These concepts were further captured in the cognitive behaviorism of Tolman and came to full fruition in the cognitive revolution of the second half of the twentieth century. Verschure subsequently describes the most relevant proposals of cognitive architectures followed by an overview of the few proposals stemming from modern neuroscience on the architecture of the brain. Subsequently, we will look at contemporary contenders that mediate between cognitive and brain architecture. An important challenge to any model of cognitive architectures is how to benchmark it. Verschure proposes the Unified Theories of Embodied Minds (UTEM) benchmark which advances from Newell’s classic Unified Theories of Cognition benchmark.
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Thompson, Evan. Looping Effects and the Cognitive Science of Mindfulness Meditation. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190495794.003.0003.
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Cognitive neuroscience tends to conceptualize mindfulness meditation as inner observation of a private mental realm of thoughts, feelings, and body sensations, and tries to model mindfulness as instantiated in neural networks visible through brain imaging tools such as EEG and fMRI. This approach confuses the biological conditions for mindfulness with mindfulness itself, which, as classically described, consists in the integrated exercise of a whole host of cognitive and bodily skills in situated and ethically directed action. From an enactive perspective, mindfulness depends on internalized social cognition and is a mode of skillful, embodied cognition that depends directly not only on the brain, but also on the rest of the body and the physical, social, and cultural environment.
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Brennan, Brian P., and Scott L. Rauch. Functional Neuroimaging Studies in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Overview and Synthesis. Edited by Christopher Pittenger. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780190228163.003.0021.
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Studies using functional neuroimaging have played a critical role in the current understanding of the neurobiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Early studies using positron emission tomography (PET) identified a core cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical circuit that is dysfunctional in OCD. Subsequent studies using behavioral paradigms in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have provided additional information about the neural substrates underlying specific psychological processes relevant to OCD. More recently, studies utilizing resting state fMRI have identified abnormal functional connectivity within intrinsic brain networks including the default mode and frontoparietal networks in OCD patients. Although these studies, as a whole, clearly substantiate the model of cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical circuit dysfunction in OCD and support the continued investigation of neuromodulatory treatments targeting these brain regions, there is also growing evidence that brain regions outside this core circuit, particularly frontoparietal regions involved in cognitive control processes, may also play a significant role in the pathophysiology of OCD.
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Ayala, Francisco J., and Camilo J. Cela-Conde. Neanderthals and modern humans. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198739906.003.0011.
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This chapter deals with the similarities and differences between Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens, by considering genetic, brain, and cognitive evidence. The genetic differentiation emerges from fossil genetic evidence obtained first from mtDNA and later from nuclear DNA. With high throughput whole genome sequencing, sequences have been obtained from the Denisova Cave (Siberia) fossils. Nuclear DNA of a third species (“Denisovans”) has been obtained from the same cave and used to define the phylogenetic relationships among the three species during the Upper Palaeolithic. Archaeological comparisons make it possible to advance a four-mode model of the evolution of symbolism. Neanderthals and modern humans would share a “modern mind” as defined up to Symbolic Mode 3. Whether the Neanderthals reached symbolic Mode 4 remains unsettled.
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Alder, Catherine A., Mary Guerriero Austrom, Michael A. LaMantia, and Malaz A. Boustani. Aging Brain Care. Edited by Robert E. Feinstein, Joseph V. Connelly, and Marilyn S. Feinstein. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780190276201.003.0008.
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While fragmented care is a problem across the entire health care delivery system, it is especially problematic for vulnerable older adults with dementia and late-life depression. Most older adults have multiple chronic conditions. Cognitive impairment and mood disorders complicate the management of these comorbid conditions by interfering with the patient’s ability to monitor and report symptoms and comply with the care plan. To reduce fragmentation and promote integrated care, each medical provider must adopt a more holistic view of health care, recognizing the importance of communication and collaboration among all providers and the potential impact of any one action on the patient’s overall health. The Aging Brain Care (ABC) model provides a structure for integrating evidence-based interventions for dementia and depression into the primary care environment. By extending the delivery of care beyond the clinic, ABC offers patient-centered services aimed at coordinating care across multiple providers, settings, and community resources.
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Rubia, Katya. ADHD brain function. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780198739258.003.0007.
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ADHD patients appear to have complex multisystem impairments in several cognitive-domain dissociated inferior, dorsolateral, and medial fronto-striato-parietal and frontocerebellar neural networks during inhibition, attention, working memory, and timing functions. There is emerging evidence for abnormalities in motivation and affect control regions, most prominently in ventral striatum, but also orbital/ventromedial frontolimbic areas. Furthermore, there is an immature interrelationship between hypoengaged task-positive cognitive control networks and a poorly ‘switched off’ default mode network, both of which impact performance. Stimulant medication enhances the activation of inferior frontostriatal systems, while atomoxetine appears to have more pronounced effects on the dorsal attention network. More studies are needed to understand the neurofunctional correlates of the effects of age, gender, ADHD subtypes, and comorbidities with other psychiatric conditions. The use of pattern recognition analyses applied to imaging to make individual diagnostic or prognostic predictions are promising and will be the challenge over the next decade.
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Hasker, William. Incarnation: The Avatar Model. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198806967.003.0006.
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This chapter presents a model of the Incarnation developed on the basis of the Na’vi avatars of the science fiction movie Avatar. The model does not address the metaphysics of the Incarnation; rather, its main concern is with the consciousness of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son. “One-sphere models,” in which the Son while incarnate has a single sphere of consciousness, are examined and found to be unsatisfactory. The avatar model is a “two-sphere model,” in which there exist distinct spheres of consciousness for the divine nature and the human nature, similar to the “two minds” view proposed by Thomas Morris. It is argued that this does not amount to Nestorianism. The possibility of a single person with multiple spheres of consciousness is defended by comparison with the psychological “split-brain” and “multiple personality” phenomena; this way of understanding those phenomena is defended against a contrary view expounded by Tim Bayne.
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Carter, Adrian, and Wayne Hall. Looking to the future: Clinical and policy implications of the brain disease model of addiction. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198786832.003.0025.
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The increasing recognition of addiction as a brain disease promises to significantly improve clinical treatment, reduce the stigma and discrimination aimed at people with an addiction, increase treatment funding and access, and discourage the use of punitive responses. This chapter argues that the brain disease model of addiction is not supported by the evidence sought in laboratories worldwide, and has failed to provide the clinical, social, and public policy benefits espoused by its proponents. Treating addiction solely as a brain disease may in fact reduce treatment-seeking, increase stigma, and focus attention on the medical treatment of addiction at the expense of more broadly effective public health policies that reduce the harms of drug use. The neuroscience research of addiction needs to be framed in a way that both accurately reflects the impact of drug use on the brain and communicated in a way that realizes the clinical and social benefits while eschewing avoidable harms.
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Merabet, Lotfi, and Alvaro Pascual-Leone. Studies of Crossmodal Functions with TMS. Edited by Charles M. Epstein, Eric M. Wassermann, and Ulf Ziemann. Oxford University Press, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198568926.013.0029.
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In the brain, information from all the senses interacts and is integrated in order to create a unified sensory percept. Some percepts appear unimodal, and some, cross modal. Unimodal percepts can be modified by crossmodal interactions given that our brains process multiple streams of sensory information in parallel and promote extensive interactions. TMS can provide valuable insights on the neural substrates associated with multisensory processing in humans. TMS is commonly described as a ‘relatively painless’ method of stimulating the brain noninvasively. However, TMS itself is strong multisensory and this should be considered while interpreting the results. With regard to the crossmodal sensory changes that follow sensory deprivation, these changes can be revealed using a variety of methods including the combination of TMS with neuroimaging.
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Raymont, Vanessa, and Robert D. Stevens. Cognitive Reserve. Oxford University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780199653461.003.0029.
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The cognitive reserve hypothesis suggests that the structure and function of an individual’s brain can modulate the clinical expression of brain damage and illness. This chapter describes passive and active models of reserve, their impact on neurological illness, and how these effects can be assessed. Passive models focus on the protective potential of anatomical features, such as brain size, neural density, and synaptic connectivity, while active models emphasize the connectivity and efficiency of neural networks and active compensation by alternative networks. It is likely that both models represent features of a common biological substrate and could help in the development of strategies to improve outcome following critical illness.
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Schechter, Elizabeth. Duality Myths. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198809654.003.0009.
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This chapter addresses the intuitive fascination of the split-brain phenomenon. According to what I call the standard explanation, it is because we ordinarily assume that people are psychologically unified, while split-brain subjects are not psychologically unified, which suggests that we might not be unified either. I offer a different interpretation. One natural way of grappling with people’s failures to conform to various assumptions we make about them is to conceptualize them as having multiple minds. Such multiple-minds models take their most dramatic form in narrative art as duality myths. The split-brain cases grip people in part because the subjects strike them as living embodiments of such myths.
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Ernst, Alexandra, Chris J. A. Moulin, Celine Souchay, Daniel C. Mograbi, and Robin Morris. Anosognosia and Metacognition in Alzheimer’s Disease. Edited by John Dunlosky and Sarah (Uma) K. Tauber. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199336746.013.12.
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While metacognition and anosognosia have long been studied as distinct concepts, more recently we have endeavored to construct a theoretical framework for exploring how metacognition can contribute to our understanding of anosognosia and vice versa. Following this approach, with a particular focus on Alzheimer’s disease (AD), this chapter first gives an overview of the key experimental findings and issues on metacognition in AD patients: in particular, overconfidence and absolute awareness; the sensitivity approach; the fractionation of metacognition in AD; the neural substrates of metacognition in the Alzheimer brain; and metacognitive control in these patients. Second, the chapter discusses the concept of anosognosia in AD patients from a cognitive neuropsychological viewpoint. It addresses models such as the cognitive awareness model and evidence from metacognition studies, and how they contribute to disentangle the issue of measuring anosognosia in AD patients. Finally, it develops the emerging concept of “implicit awareness” in AD patients.
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Stumpp, Stefan, Daniel Michelis, and Thomas Schildhauer, eds. Social Media Handbuch. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.5771/9783748907466.
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The Social Media Handbook provides guidance on long-term developments in the ever-changing social media sector and explains fundamental interrelationships in this field. It describes a strategy model for the development of one’s own solutions, summarises the theories, methods and models of leading authors and shows their practical application, while also highlighting current developments and dealing with the topic of data processing in social media. An examination of the platform economy with its economic functions facilitates the classification of business models in social media. The book also shows how platforms and their algorithms can influence our actions and shape our opinions. With contributions by Prof. Karin Bjerregaard Schlüter, Andrea Braun, Franziska Geue, Tobias Knopf, Markus Korbien, Prof. Dr. Daniel Michelis, Stefan Pfaff, Thanh H. Pham, Tom Reichstein, Prof. Dr. Anna Riedel, Michael Sarbacher, Prof. Dr. Dr. Thomas Schildhauer, Prof. Dr. Hendrik Send, Dr. Stefan Stumpp, Prof. Dr. Sebastian Volkmann, Jan-Benedikt Weber, Julia Weißhaupt, Norman Wiebach und Prof. Dr. Christian Wissing.
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Butz, Martin V., and Esther F. Kutter. Top-Down Predictions Determine Perceptions. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198739692.003.0009.
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While bottom-up visual processing is important, the brain integrates this information with top-down, generative expectations from very early on in the visual processing hierarchy. Indeed, our brain should not be viewed as a classification system, but rather as a generative system, which perceives something by integrating sensory evidence with the available, learned, predictive knowledge about that thing. The involved generative models continuously produce expectations over time, across space, and from abstracted encodings to more concrete encodings. Bayesian information processing is the key to understand how information integration must work computationally – at least in approximation – also in the brain. Bayesian networks in the form of graphical models allow the modularization of information and the factorization of interactions, which can strongly improve the efficiency of generative models. The resulting generative models essentially produce state estimations in the form of probability densities, which are very well-suited to integrate multiple sources of information, including top-down and bottom-up ones. A hierarchical neural visual processing architecture illustrates this point even further. Finally, some well-known visual illusions are shown and the perceptions are explained by means of generative, information integrating, perceptual processes, which in all cases combine top-down prior knowledge and expectations about objects and environments with the available, bottom-up visual information.
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McNamara, Patrick, and Magda Giordano. Cognitive Neuroscience and Religious Language. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190636647.003.0005.
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Communication between deities and human beings rests on the use of language. Religious language has peculiarities such as the use of a formal voice, reductions in first-person and elevation of third-person pronoun use, archaistic elements, and an abundance of speech acts—features that reflect and facilitate the binding of the individual to conceived ultimate reality and value, decentering the Self while focusing on the deity. Explorations of the neurologic correlates of these cognitive and linguistic processes may be useful to identify constraints on neurocognitive models of religious language, and metaphor. The key brain regions that may mediate religious language include neural networks known to be involved in computational assessments of value, future-oriented simulations, Self-agency, Self-reflection, and attributing intentionality of goals to others. Studies indicate that some of the areas involved in those processes are active during personal prayer, whereas brain regions related to habit formation appear active during formal prayer. By examining religious language, and the brain areas engaged by it, we aim to develop more comprehensive neurocognitive models of religious cognition.
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Veech, Richard L., and M. Todd King. Alzheimer’s Disease. Edited by Detlev Boison. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780190497996.003.0026.
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Deficits in cerebral glucose utilization in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) arise decades before cognitive impairment and accumulation of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in brain. Addressing this metabolic deficit has greater potential in treating AD than targeting later disease processes – an approach that has failed consistently in the clinic. Cerebral glucose utilization requires numerous enzymes, many of which have been shown to decline in AD. Perhaps the most important is pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH), which links glycolysis with the Krebs cycle and aerobic metabolism, and whose activity is greatly suppressed in AD. The unique metabolism of ketone bodies allows them to bypass the block at pyruvate dehydrogenase and restore brain metabolism. Recent studies in mouse genetic models of AD and in a human Alzheimer’s patient showed the potential of ketones in maintaining brain energetics and function. Oral ketone bodies might be a promising avenue for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
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Rauch, Sheila A. M., and Israel Liberzon. Mechanisms of Action in Psychotherapy. Edited by Israel Liberzon and Kerry J. Ressler. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780190215422.003.0019.
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Therapy at its core is based on learning, and learning at its core is biological. Experience that is not in some way encoded in the brain and/or body is lost. This chapter provides a discussion of mechanisms of therapy research in PTSD in which the goal is to understand how PTSD therapy works. First, the chapter reviews what a mechanism is and how therapeutic mechanisms are examined. It then discusses the importance of therapeutic mechanisms research within the broader realm of mental health research. It focuses on prolonged exposure (PE) therapy for PTSD as an example of application of mechanisms research methodology and begins with the presentation of a theoretical model that builds on previous theory and mechanisms research to date. While much of this model is theoretical, the goal is to show how mechanisms research may apply to clinical practice to improve precision, efficiency, and efficacy.
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Hilton, Denis. Social Attribution and Explanation. Edited by Michael R. Waldmann. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199399550.013.33.
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Attribution processes appear to be an integral part of human visual perception, as low-level inferences of causality and intentionality appear to be automatic and are supported by specific brain systems. However, higher-order attribution processes use information held in memory or made present at the time of judgment. While attribution processes about social objects are sometimes biased, there is scope for partial correction. This chapter reviews work on the generation, communication, and interpretation of complex explanations, with reference to explanation-based models of text understanding that result in situation models of narratives. It distinguishes between causal connection and causal selection, and suggests that a factor will be discounted if it is not perceived to be connected to the event and backgrounded if it is perceived to be causally connected to that event, but is not selected as relevant to an explanation. The final section focuses on how interpersonal explanation processes constrain causal selection.
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Hanson, Robin. The Age of Em. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198754626.001.0001.
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Robots may one day rule the world, but what is a robot-ruled Earth like? Many think the first truly smart robots will be brain emulations or ems. Scan a human brain, then run a model with the same connections on a fast computer, and you have a robot brain, but recognizably human. Train an em to do some job and copy it a million times: an army of workers is at your disposal. When they can be made cheaply, within perhaps a century, ems will displace humans in most jobs. In this new economic era, the world economy may double in size every few weeks. Some say we can't know the future, especially following such a disruptive new technology, but Professor Robin Hanson sets out to prove them wrong. Applying decades of expertise in physics, computer science, and economics, he uses standard theories to paint a detailed picture of a world dominated by ems. While human lives don't change greatly in the em era, em lives are as different from ours as our lives are from those of our farmer and forager ancestors. Ems make us question common assumptions of moral progress, because they reject many of the values we hold dear. Read about em mind speeds, body sizes, job training and career paths, energy use and cooling infrastructure, virtual reality, aging and retirement, death and immortality, security, wealth inequality, religion, teleportation, identity, cities, politics, law, war, status, friendship and love. This book shows you just how strange your descendants may be, though ems are no stranger than we would appear to our ancestors. To most ems, it seems good to be an em.
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Butz, Martin V., and Esther F. Kutter. Behavioral Flexibility and Anticipatory Behavior. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198739692.003.0006.
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While reward-oriented learning can adapt and optimize behavior, this chapter shows how behavior can become anticipatory and selectively goal-oriented. Flexibility and adaptability are necessary when living in changing environmental niches. As a consequence, different locations in the environment need to be distinguished to enable selective and optimally attuned interactions. To accomplish this, sensorimotor learning is necessary. With sufficient sensorimotor knowledge, the progressively abstract learning of environmental predictive models becomes possible. These models enable forward anticipations about action consequences and incoming sensory information. As a consequence, our own influences on the environment can be distinguished from other influences, following the re-afference principle. Moreover, inverse anticipations enable the selection of the behavior that is believed to reach current goals most effectively. Coupled with motivations, goal-directed behavior can be generated self-motivatedly. Furthermore, curious, information seeking, epistemic behavior can be generated. The remainder of the book addresses how the brain accomplishes this goal-oriented, self-motivated generation of behavior and thought, where the latter can be considered mental behavior.
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Saalmann, Yuri B., and Sabine Kastner. Neural Mechanisms of Spatial Attention in the Visual Thalamus. Edited by Anna C. (Kia) Nobre and Sabine Kastner. Oxford University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199675111.013.013.
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Neural mechanisms of selective attention route behaviourally relevant information through brain networks for detailed processing. These attention mechanisms are classically viewed as being solely implemented in the cortex, relegating the thalamus to a passive relay of sensory information. However, this passive view of the thalamus is being revised in light of recent studies supporting an important role for the thalamus in selective attention. Evidence suggests that the first-order thalamic nucleus, the lateral geniculate nucleus, regulates the visual information transmitted from the retina to visual cortex, while the higher-order thalamic nucleus, the pulvinar, regulates information transmission between visual cortical areas, according to attentional demands. This chapter discusses how modulation of thalamic responses, switching the response mode of thalamic neurons, and changes in neural synchrony across thalamo-cortical networks contribute to selective attention.
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De Souza, Jonathan. Music at Hand. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190271114.001.0001.
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Musical instruments ground players’ actions and the sounds they create. Yet this book further claims that instruments mediate perception and imagination. Practicing an instrument builds bodily skills, while also fostering auditory-motor connections in players’ brains. These intersensory links reflect the ways that a particular instrument converts action into sound, the ways that it coordinates tonal and physical space. Reactivated in various ways, these connections can influence instrumentalists’ listening, improvisation, and composition. To investigate these effects, the book engages both classical and popular styles, from Bach to electronic music, from Beethoven to the blues. It uses Lewinian transformational theory to model instrumental interfaces and to analyze patterns of body-instrument interaction. Though based in music theory and analysis, the book also draws on psychology, including cognitive neuroscience, and the phenomenological philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. Ultimately, it argues that music cognition is not simply embodied; it is also conditioned by musical technology.
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Butz, Martin V., and Esther F. Kutter. How the Mind Comes into Being. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198739692.001.0001.
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For more than 2000 years Greek philosophers have thought about the puzzling introspectively assessed dichotomy between our physical bodies and our seemingly non-physical minds. How is it that we can think highly abstract thoughts, seemingly fully detached from actual, physical reality? Despite the obvious interactions between mind and body (we get tired, we are hungry, we stay up late despite being tired, etc.), until today it remains puzzling how our mind controls our body, and vice versa, how our body shapes our mind. Despite a big movement towards embodied cognitive science over the last 20 years or so, introductory books with a functional and computational perspective on how human thought and language capabilities may actually have come about – and are coming about over and over again – are missing. This book fills that gap. Starting with a historical background on traditional cognitive science and resulting fundamental challenges that have not been resolved, embodied cognitive science is introduced and its implications for how human minds have come and continue to come into being are detailed. In particular, the book shows that evolution has produced biological bodies that provide “morphologically intelligent” structures, which foster the development of suitable behavioral and cognitive capabilities. While these capabilities can be modified and optimized given positive and negative reward as feedback, to reach abstract cognitive capabilities, evolution has furthermore produced particular anticipatory control-oriented mechanisms, which cause the development of particular types of predictive encodings, modularizations, and abstractions. Coupled with an embodied motivational system, versatile, goal-directed, self-motivated behavior, learning becomes possible. These lines of thought are introduced and detailed from interdisciplinary, evolutionary, ontogenetic, reinforcement learning, and anticipatory predictive encoding perspectives in the first part of the book. A short excursus then provides an introduction to neuroscience, including general knowledge about brain anatomy, and basic neural and brain functionality, as well as the main research methodologies. With reference to this knowledge, the subsequent chapters then focus on how the human brain manages to develop abstract thought and language. Sensory systems, motor systems, and their predictive, control-oriented interactions are detailed from a functional and computational perspective. Bayesian information processing is introduced along these lines as are generative models. Moreover, it is shown how particular modularizations can develop. When control and attention come into play, these structures develop also dependent on the available motor capabilities. Vice versa, the development of more versatile motor capabilities depends on structural development. Event-oriented abstractions enable conceptualizations and behavioral compositions, paving the path towards abstract thought and language. Also evolutionary drives towards social interactions play a crucial role. Based on the developing sensorimotor- and socially-grounded structures, the human mind becomes language ready. The development of language in each human child then further facilitates the self-motivated generation of abstract, compositional, highly flexible thought about the present, past, and future, as well as about others. In conclusion, the book gives an overview over how the human mind comes into being – sketching out a developmental pathway towards the mastery of abstract and reflective thought, while detailing the critical body and neural functionalities, and computational mechanisms, which enable this development.
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Vallar, Giuseppe, and Nadia Bolognini. Unilateral Spatial Neglect. Edited by Anna C. (Kia) Nobre and Sabine Kastner. Oxford University Press, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199675111.013.012.
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Left unilateral spatial neglect is the most frequent and disabling neuropsychological syndrome caused by lesions to the right hemisphere. Over 50% of right-brain-damaged patients show neglect, while right neglect after left-hemispheric damage is less frequent. Neglect patients are unable to orient towards the side contralateral to the lesion, to detect and report sensory events in that portion of space, as well as to explore it by motor action. Neglect is a multicomponent disorder, which may involve the contralesional side of the body or of extra-personal physical or imagined space, different sensory modalities, specific domains (e.g. ‘neglect dyslexia’), and worsen sensorimotor deficits. Neglect is due to higher-order unilateral deficits of spatial attention and representation, so that patients are not aware of contralesional events, which, however, undergo a substantial amount of unconscious processing up to the semantic level. Cross-modal sensory integration is also largely preserved. Neglect is primarily a spatially specific disorder of perceptual consciousness. The responsible lesions involve a network including the fronto-temporo-parietal cortex (particularly the posterior-inferior parietal lobe, at the temporo-parietal junction), their white matter connections, and some subcortical grey nuclei (thalamus, basal ganglia). Damage to primary sensory and motor regions is not associated to neglect. A variety of physiological lateralized and asymmetrical sensory stimulations (vestibular, optokinetic, prism adaptation, motor activation), and transcranial electrical and magnetic stimulations, may temporarily improve or worsen neglect. Different procedures have been successfully developed to rehabilitate neglect, using both ‘top down’ (training the voluntary orientation of attention) and ‘bottom up’ (the above-mentioned stimulations) approaches.