Download or read book Pain and the Conscious Brain written by Luis Garcia-Larrea and published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pain and the Conscious Brain brings together more than 30 international leaders from multiple fields to link the complex concept of pain to the equally complex notion of consciousness. Offering a clear, cutting-edge understanding of the brain mechanisms that generate the conscious experience of pain, this book scientifically addresses the difficult and chronic pains that often have no known physical cause and can defy comprehension in terms of current pain theories. Numerous tables, full-color figures, and up-to-date references highlight expert coverage of today’s gradual paradigm shift from peripheral receptors to the intricacy of the brain and the experience of the self.
Download or read book Feeling Knowing written by Antonio Damasio and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the world’s leading neuroscientists: a succinct, illuminating, wholly engaging investigation of how biology, neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence have given us the tools to unlock the mysteries of human consciousness “One thrilling insight after another ... Damasio has succeeded brilliantly in narrowing the gap between body and mind.” —The New York Times Book Review In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In the forty-eight brief chapters of Feeling & Knowing, and in writing that remains faithful to our intuitive sense of what feeling and experiencing are about, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large. He combines the latest discoveries in various sciences with philosophy and discusses his original research, which has transformed our understanding of the brain and human behavior. Here is an indispensable guide to understanding how we experience the world within and around us and find our place in the universe.
Download or read book Conscious Mind Resonant Brain written by Stephen Grossberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does your mind work? How does your brain give rise to your mind? These are questions that all of us have wondered about at some point in our lives, if only because everything that we know is experienced in our minds. They are also very hard questions to answer. After all, how can a mind understand itself? How can you understand something as complex as the tool that is being used to understand it? This book provides an introductory and self-contained description of some of the exciting answers to these questions that modern theories of mind and brain have recently proposed. Stephen Grossberg is broadly acknowledged to be the most important pioneer and current research leader who has, for the past 50 years, modelled how brains give rise to minds, notably how neural circuits in multiple brain regions interact together to generate psychological functions. This research has led to a unified understanding of how, where, and why our brains can consciously see, hear, feel, and know about the world, and effectively plan and act within it. The work embodies revolutionary Principia of Mind that clarify how autonomous adaptive intelligence is achieved. It provides mechanistic explanations of multiple mental disorders, including symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, autism, amnesia, and sleep disorders; biological bases of morality and religion, including why our brains are biased towards the good so that values are not purely relative; perplexing aspects of the human condition, including why many decisions are irrational and self-defeating despite evolution's selection of adaptive behaviors; and solutions to large-scale problems in machine learning, technology, and Artificial Intelligence that provide a blueprint for autonomously intelligent algorithms and robots. Because brains embody a universal developmental code, unifying insights also emerge about shared laws that are found in all living cellular tissues, from the most primitive to the most advanced, notably how the laws governing networks of interacting cells support developmental and learning processes in all species. The fundamental brain design principles of complementarity, uncertainty, and resonance that Grossberg has discovered also reflect laws of the physical world with which our brains ceaselessly interact, and which enable our brains to incrementally learn to understand those laws, thereby enabling humans to understand the world scientifically. Accessibly written, and lavishly illustrated, Conscious Mind/Resonant Brain is the magnum opus of one of the most influential scientists of the past 50 years, and will appeal to a broad readership across the sciences and humanities.
Download or read book Discovering the Brain written by National Academy of Sciences and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The brain ... There is no other part of the human anatomy that is so intriguing. How does it develop and function and why does it sometimes, tragically, degenerate? The answers are complex. In Discovering the Brain, science writer Sandra Ackerman cuts through the complexity to bring this vital topic to the public. The 1990s were declared the "Decade of the Brain" by former President Bush, and the neuroscience community responded with a host of new investigations and conferences. Discovering the Brain is based on the Institute of Medicine conference, Decade of the Brain: Frontiers in Neuroscience and Brain Research. Discovering the Brain is a "field guide" to the brainâ€"an easy-to-read discussion of the brain's physical structure and where functions such as language and music appreciation lie. Ackerman examines: How electrical and chemical signals are conveyed in the brain. The mechanisms by which we see, hear, think, and pay attentionâ€"and how a "gut feeling" actually originates in the brain. Learning and memory retention, including parallels to computer memory and what they might tell us about our own mental capacity. Development of the brain throughout the life span, with a look at the aging brain. Ackerman provides an enlightening chapter on the connection between the brain's physical condition and various mental disorders and notes what progress can realistically be made toward the prevention and treatment of stroke and other ailments. Finally, she explores the potential for major advances during the "Decade of the Brain," with a look at medical imaging techniquesâ€"what various technologies can and cannot tell usâ€"and how the public and private sectors can contribute to continued advances in neuroscience. This highly readable volume will provide the public and policymakersâ€"and many scientists as wellâ€"with a helpful guide to understanding the many discoveries that are sure to be announced throughout the "Decade of the Brain."
Download or read book Assessing Pain and Communication in Disorders of Consciousness written by Camille Chatelle and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2015-12-14 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent advances in medicine for resuscitation and care have led to an increased number of patients that survive severe brain damage but who are poorly responsive and non-communicative at the bedside. This has led to a striking need to better characterize, understand, and manage this population who present a real challenge for the assessment of pain and for planning treatment. This edited collection provides clinicians with a guide to recent developments in research on pain perception and assessment, and the detection of consciousness and communication in patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC). With contributions from leading global researchers, the book gives an overview of issues concerning the assessment of pain. It also covers the development of suitable tools both to improve pain management and to detect consciousness and communication in these patients, to influence their prognosis and treatment, and their quality of life. Methodological and ethical issues concerning the implication for future research are also considered. The book will be an invaluable guide for clinicians, medics and therapists working in rehabilitation and acute care, particularly in the demanding field of pain perception, pain assessment and detection of consciousness and communication in patients with DOC. It will also be useful for students and researchers in neuropsychology and medical sciences.
Download or read book Pain Dynamics and Complexities written by Daniel M. Doleys PhD and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-18 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the proliferation of pain clinics and various pain-oriented therapies, there is an absence of data supporting any substantial change in the statistics regarding the incidence, development and persistence of pain. As renowned pain clinician and scientist Daniel M. Doleys argues, there may be a need for a fundamental shift in the way we view pain. In this thoughtful work, Doleys presents the evolving concept and complex nature of pain with the intention of promoting a broadening of the existing paradigm within which pain is viewed and understood. Combining neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy of science, this book reviews the history of pain and outlines the current concepts and theories regarding the mechanisms involved in the experience of pain. Experimental and clinical research in a broad array of areas including neonatal pain, empathy and pain, psychogenic pain, and genetics and pain is summarized. The notion of pain as a disease process rather than a symptom is highlighted. Although there is a continued interest in activation of the peripheral nociceptive system as a determining factor in the experience of pain, the growing appreciation for the brain as the intimate 'pain generator' is emphasized. The definition of consciousness and conscious awareness and a theory as to how it relates to nociceptive processing is discussed. Finally, the author describes the potential benefit of incorporating some of the concepts from systems and quantum theory into our thinking about pain. The area of pain research and treatment seems on the precipice of change. This work intends to provide a glimpse of what these changes might be in the context of where pain research and therapy has come from, where it currently is, and where it might be headed.
Download or read book Phantoms in the Brain written by V. S. Ramachandran and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1999-08-18 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran is internationally renowned for uncovering answers to the deep and quirky questions of human nature that few scientists have dared to address. His bold insights about the brain are matched only by the stunning simplicity of his experiments -- using such low-tech tools as cotton swabs, glasses of water and dime-store mirrors. In Phantoms in the Brain, Dr. Ramachandran recounts how his work with patients who have bizarre neurological disorders has shed new light on the deep architecture of the brain, and what these findings tell us about who we are, how we construct our body image, why we laugh or become depressed, why we may believe in God, how we make decisions, deceive ourselves and dream, perhaps even why we're so clever at philosophy, music and art. Some of his most notable cases: A woman paralyzed on the left side of her body who believes she is lifting a tray of drinks with both hands offers a unique opportunity to test Freud's theory of denial. A man who insists he is talking with God challenges us to ask: Could we be "wired" for religious experience? A woman who hallucinates cartoon characters illustrates how, in a sense, we are all hallucinating, all the time. Dr. Ramachandran's inspired medical detective work pushes the boundaries of medicine's last great frontier -- the human mind -- yielding new and provocative insights into the "big questions" about consciousness and the self.
Download or read book Consciousness and the Social Brain written by Michael S. A. Graziano and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is consciousness and how can a brain, a mere collection of neurons, create it? In Consciousness and the Social Brain, Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano lays out an audacious new theory to account for the deepest mystery of them all. The human brain has evolved a complex circuitry that allows it to be socially intelligent. This social machinery has only just begun to be studied in detail. One function of this circuitry is to attribute awareness to others: to compute that person Y is aware of thing X. In Graziano's theory, the machinery that attributes awareness to others also attributes it to oneself. Damage that machinery and you disrupt your own awareness. Graziano discusses the science, the evidence, the philosophy, and the surprising implications of this new theory.
Download or read book Individual Differences in Conscious Experience written by Robert G. Kunzendorf and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2000-02-15 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Individual Differences in Conscious Experience is intended for readers with philosophical, psychological, or clinical interests in subjective experience. It addresses some difficult but important issues in the study of consciousness, subconsciousness, and self-consciousness. The book’s fourteen chapters are written by renowned, pioneering researchers who, collectively, have published more than fifty books and more than one thousand journal articles. The editors’ introductory chapter frames the book’s subtext: that mind-brain theories embodying the constraints of individual differences in subjective experience should be given greater credence than nomothetic theories ignoring those constraints. The next five chapters describe research and theory pertaining to individual differences in conscious sensations — specifically, individual differences in pain perception, phantom limbs, gustatory sensations, and mental imagery. Then, two succeeding chapters focus on individual differences in subconsciousness. The final six chapters address individual differences in altered states of self-consciousness — dreams, hypnotic phenomena, and various clinical syndromes. (Series B)
Download or read book Brain Function and Responsiveness in Disorders of Consciousness written by Martin M. Monti and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-11-30 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides up-to-date information on all aspects of brain function and responsiveness in patients with severe disorders of consciousness. Topics considered include the mechanisms and measures of consciousness; perfusional, metabolic, and fMRI markers of responsiveness; responsiveness to pain; the role of brain–computer interface techniques; electrophysiology; cortical excitability; autonomic responsiveness; the natural history of vegetative and minimally conscious states; and prediction of outcome. Brain neuroimaging has documented residual responsiveness in the vegetative state. The scientific impact of this seminal evidence has generated a schism between neuroscience and the clinical criteria defining consciousness and responsiveness. Our current understanding of human consciousness must be reconsidered also in view of the emotional impact on the public and the far-reaching implications for diagnosis, prognosis, medical treatment, human costs, medical and individual responsibility, logistics, healthcare, ethics, etc. It is hoped that this book will help to bridge the gap between neuroscience and clinical routine.
Download or read book Healing Back Pain written by John E. Sarno and published by Balance. This book was released on 2001-03-15 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. John E. Sarno's groundbreaking research on TMS (Tension Myoneural Syndrome) reveals how stress and other psychological factors can cause back pain-and how you can be pain free without drugs, exercise, or surgery. Dr. Sarno's program has helped thousands of patients find relief from chronic back conditions. In this New York Times bestseller, Dr. Sarno teaches you how to identify stress and other psychological factors that cause back pain and demonstrates how to heal yourself--without drugs, surgery or exercise. Find out: Why self-motivated and successful people are prone to Tension Myoneural Syndrome (TMS) How anxiety and repressed anger trigger muscle spasms How people condition themselves to accept back pain as inevitable With case histories and the results of in-depth mind-body research, Dr. Sarno reveals how you can recognize the emotional roots of your TMS and sever the connections between mental and physical pain...and start recovering from back pain today.
Download or read book Self Comes to Mind written by Antonio Damasio and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-11-09 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading neuroscientist explores with authority, with imagination, and with unparalleled mastery how the brain constructs the mind and how the brain makes that mind conscious. Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty years researching and and revealing how the brain works. Here, in his most ambitious and stunning work yet, he rejects the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separate from the body, and presents compelling new scientific evidence that posits an evolutionary perspective. His view entails a radical change in the way the history of the conscious mind is viewed and told, suggesting that the brain’s development of a human self is a challenge to nature’s indifference. This development helps to open the way for the appearance of culture, perhaps one of our most defining characteristics as thinking and self-aware beings.
Download or read book The Brain s Way of Healing written by Norman Doidge and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-01-27 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The New York Times–bestselling author of The Brain That Changes Itself presents astounding advances in the treatment of brain injury and illness. Now in an updated and expanded paperback edition. Winner of the 2015 Gold Nautilus Book Award in Science & Cosmology In his groundbreaking work The Brain That Changes Itself, Norman Doidge introduced readers to neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to change its own structure and function in response to activity and mental experience. Now his revolutionary new book shows how the amazing process of neuroplastic healing really works. The Brain’s Way of Healing describes natural, noninvasive avenues into the brain provided by the energy around us—in light, sound, vibration, and movement—that can awaken the brain’s own healing capacities without producing unpleasant side effects. Doidge explores cases where patients alleviated chronic pain; recovered from debilitating strokes, brain injuries, and learning disorders; overcame attention deficit and learning disorders; and found relief from symptoms of autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and cerebral palsy. And we learn how to vastly reduce the risk of dementia, with simple approaches anyone can use. For centuries it was believed that the brain’s complexity prevented recovery from damage or disease. The Brain’s Way of Healing shows that this very sophistication is the source of a unique kind of healing. As he did so lucidly in The Brain That Changes Itself, Doidge uses stories to present cutting-edge science with practical real-world applications, and principles that everyone can apply to improve their brain’s performance and health.
Download or read book Self Comes to Mind written by Antonio Damasio and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading neuroscientist explores with authority, with imagination, and with unparalleled mastery how the brain constructs the mind and how the brain makes that mind conscious. Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty years researching and and revealing how the brain works. Here, in his most ambitious and stunning work yet, he rejects the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separate from the body, and presents compelling new scientific evidence that posits an evolutionary perspective. His view entails a radical change in the way the history of the conscious mind is viewed and told, suggesting that the brain’s development of a human self is a challenge to nature’s indifference. This development helps to open the way for the appearance of culture, perhaps one of our most defining characteristics as thinking and self-aware beings.
Download or read book Pain and Disability written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1987-01-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Painâ€"it is the most common complaint presented to physicians. Yet pain is subjectiveâ€"it cannot be measured directly and is difficult to validate. Evaluating claims based on pain poses major problems for the Social Security Administration (SSA) and other disability insurers. This volume covers the epidemiology and physiology of pain; psychosocial contributions to pain and illness behavior; promising ways of assessing and measuring chronic pain and dysfunction; clinical aspects of prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation; and how the SSA's benefit structure and administrative procedures may affect pain complaints.
Download or read book A Mind of Its Own How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives written by Cordelia Fine and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-06-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Provocative enough to make you start questioning your each and every action."—Entertainment Weekly The brain's power is confirmed and touted every day in new studies and research. And yet we tend to take our brains for granted, without suspecting that those masses of hard-working neurons might not always be working for us. Cordelia Fine introduces us to a brain we might not want to meet, a brain with a mind of its own. She illustrates the brain's tendency toward self-delusion as she explores how the mind defends and glorifies the ego by twisting and warping our perceptions. Our brains employ a slew of inborn mind-bugs and prejudices, from hindsight bias to unrealistic optimism, from moral excuse-making to wishful thinking—all designed to prevent us from seeing the truth about the world and the people around us, and about ourselves.
Download or read book Mind Matters written by Michael S. Gazzaniga and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes how research is showing how the mind and the body affect each other and how each individual can better manage their bodies and lives.
