Download or read book Societies of Brains written by Walter J. Freeman and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2014-03-05 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph from a leading neuroscientist and neural networks researcher investigates and offers a fresh approach to the perplexing scientific and philosophical problems of minds and brains. It explains how brains have evolved from our earliest vertebrate ancestors. It details how brains provide the basis for successful comprehension of the environment, for the formulation of actions and prediction of their consequences, and for cooperating or competing with other beings that have brains. The book also offers observations regarding such issues as: * how and why people fall in and out of love; * the biological basis for experiencing feelings of love and hate; and * how music and dance have provided the ancestral technology for forming social groups such as tribes and clans. The author reviews the history of the mind-brain problem, and demonstrates how the new sciences of behavioral electrophysiology and nonlinear dynamics -- combined with the latest computer technology -- have made it possible for us to observe brains in action. He also provides an answer to the question: What happens to a stimulus after it enters the brain? The answer: The stimulus triggers the construction of a percept and is then washed away. All that we know is what our brains construct for us by neurodynamics. Brains are not logical devices that process information. They are dynamical systems that create meaning through interactions with the environment -- and each other. The book shows how the learning process by which brains construct meaning tends to isolate brains into self-centered worlds, and how nature has provided a remedy -- first appearing in mammals as a mechanism for pair-bonding -- to ensure reproduction of the young dependent on parents. The remedy is based in the neurochemistry of sex which serves to dissolve belief structures in order to open the way for new patterns of understanding and behavior. Individuals experience these changes in various ways, such as falling in love, collegiate indoctrination, tribal bonding, brain washing, political or religious conversions, and related types of socialization. The highest forms of meaning for humans come through these social attachments.
Download or read book Social written by Matthew D. Lieberman and published by Crown. This book was released on 2013-10-08 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are profoundly social creatures--more than we know. In Social, renowned psychologist Matthew Lieberman explores groundbreaking research in social neuroscience revealing that our need to connect with other people is even more fundamental, more basic, than our need for food or shelter. Because of this, our brain uses its spare time to learn about the social world--other people and our relation to them. It is believed that we must commit 10,000 hours to master a skill. According to Lieberman, each of us has spent 10,000 hours learning to make sense of people and groups by the time we are ten. Social argues that our need to reach out to and connect with others is a primary driver behind our behavior. We believe that pain and pleasure alone guide our actions. Yet, new research using fMRI--including a great deal of original research conducted by Lieberman and his UCLA lab--shows that our brains react to social pain and pleasure in much the same way as they do to physical pain and pleasure. Fortunately, the brain has evolved sophisticated mechanisms for securing our place in the social world. We have a unique ability to read other people’s minds, to figure out their hopes, fears, and motivations, allowing us to effectively coordinate our lives with one another. And our most private sense of who we are is intimately linked to the important people and groups in our lives. This wiring often leads us to restrain our selfish impulses for the greater good. These mechanisms lead to behavior that might seem irrational, but is really just the result of our deep social wiring and necessary for our success as a species. Based on the latest cutting edge research, the findings in Social have important real-world implications. Our schools and businesses, for example, attempt to minimalize social distractions. But this is exactly the wrong thing to do to encourage engagement and learning, and literally shuts down the social brain, leaving powerful neuro-cognitive resources untapped. The insights revealed in this pioneering book suggest ways to improve learning in schools, make the workplace more productive, and improve our overall well-being.
Download or read book Society Of Mind written by Marvin Minsky and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1988-03-15 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Computing Methodologies -- Artificial Intelligence.
Download or read book How Brains Make Up Their Minds written by Walter J. Freeman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I think, therefore I am. The legendary pronouncement of philosopher René Descartes lingers as accepted wisdom in the Western world nearly four centuries after its author's death. But does thought really come first? Who actually runs the show: we, our thoughts, or the neurons firing within our brains? Walter J. Freeman explores how we control our behavior and make sense of the world around us. Avoiding determinism both in sociobiology, which proposes that persons' genes control their brains' functioning, and in neuroscience, which posits that their brains' disposition is molded by chemistry and environmental forces, Freeman charts a new course--one that gives individuals due credit and responsibility for their actions. Drawing upon his five decades of research in neuroscience, Freeman utilizes the latest advances in his field as well as perspectives from disciplines as diverse as mathematics, psychology, and philosophy to explicate how different human brains act in their chosen diverse ways. He clarifies the implications of brain imaging, by which neural activity can be observed during the course of normal movements, and shows how nonlinear dynamics reveals order within the fecund chaos of brain function.
Download or read book Mind Society written by Paul Thagard and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-30 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do minds make societies, and how do societies change? Paul Thagard systematically connects neural and psychological explanations of mind with major social sciences (social psychology, sociology, politics, economics, anthropology, and history) and professions (medicine, law, education, engineering, and business). Social change emerges from interacting social and mental mechanisms. Many economists and political scientists assume that individuals make rational choices, despite the abundance of evidence that people frequently succumb to thinking errors such as motivated inference. Much of sociology and anthropology is taken over with postmodernist assumptions that everything is constructed on the basis of social relations such as power, with no inkling that these relations are mediated by how people think about each other. Mind-Society displays the interdependence of the cognitive and social sciences by describing the interconnections among mental and social mechanisms, which interact to generate social changes ranging from marriage patterns to wars. Validation comes from detailed studies of important social changes, from norms about romantic relationships to economic practices, political institutions, religious customs, and international relations. This book belongs to a trio that includes Brain-Mind: From Neurons to Consciousness and Creativity and Natural Philosophy: From Social Brains to Knowledge, Reality, Morality, and Beauty. They can be read independently, but together they make up a Treatise on Mind and Society that provides a unified and comprehensive treatment of the cognitive sciences, social sciences, professions, and humanities.
Download or read book Brain and Culture written by Bruce E. Wexler and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008-08-29 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research shows that between birth and early adulthood the brain requires sensory stimulation to develop physically. The nature of the stimulation shapes the connections among neurons that create the neuronal networks necessary for thought and behavior. By changing the cultural environment, each generation shapes the brains of the next. By early adulthood, the neuroplasticity of the brain is greatly reduced, and this leads to a fundamental shift in the relationship between the individual and the environment: during the first part of life, the brain and mind shape themselves to the major recurring features of their environment; by early adulthood, the individual attempts to make the environment conform to the established internal structures of the brain and mind. In Brain and Culture, Bruce Wexler explores the social implications of the close and changing neurobiological relationship between the individual and the environment, with particular attention to the difficulties individuals face in adulthood when the environment changes beyond their ability to maintain the fit between existing internal structure and external reality. These difficulties are evident in bereavement, the meeting of different cultures, the experience of immigrants (in which children of immigrant families are more successful than their parents at the necessary internal transformations), and the phenomenon of interethnic violence. Integrating recent neurobiological research with major experimental findings in cognitive and developmental psychology—with illuminating references to psychoanalysis, literature, anthropology, history, and politics—Wexler presents a wealth of detail to support his arguments. The groundbreaking connections he makes allow for reconceptualization of the effect of cultural change on the brain and provide a new biological base from which to consider such social issues as "culture wars" and ethnic violence.
Download or read book Brains Practices Relativism written by Stephen Turner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2002-05 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Social Theory After Cognitive Science1. Throwing Out the Tacit Rule Book: Learning and Practices2. Searle's Social Reality3. Imitation or the Internalization of Norms: Is Twentieth-Century Social Theory Based on the Wrong Choice?4. Relativism as Explanation5. The Limits of Social Constructionism6. Making Normative Soup Out of Nonnormative Bones7. Teaching Subtlety of Thought: The Lessons of "Contextualism"8. Practice in Real Time9. The Significance of ShilsReferences Index Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Download or read book Societies of Brains written by Walter J. Freeman and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2014-03-05 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph from a leading neuroscientist and neural networks researcher investigates and offers a fresh approach to the perplexing scientific and philosophical problems of minds and brains. It explains how brains have evolved from our earliest vertebrate ancestors. It details how brains provide the basis for successful comprehension of the environment, for the formulation of actions and prediction of their consequences, and for cooperating or competing with other beings that have brains. The book also offers observations regarding such issues as: * how and why people fall in and out of love; * the biological basis for experiencing feelings of love and hate; and * how music and dance have provided the ancestral technology for forming social groups such as tribes and clans. The author reviews the history of the mind-brain problem, and demonstrates how the new sciences of behavioral electrophysiology and nonlinear dynamics -- combined with the latest computer technology -- have made it possible for us to observe brains in action. He also provides an answer to the question: What happens to a stimulus after it enters the brain? The answer: The stimulus triggers the construction of a percept and is then washed away. All that we know is what our brains construct for us by neurodynamics. Brains are not logical devices that process information. They are dynamical systems that create meaning through interactions with the environment -- and each other. The book shows how the learning process by which brains construct meaning tends to isolate brains into self-centered worlds, and how nature has provided a remedy -- first appearing in mammals as a mechanism for pair-bonding -- to ensure reproduction of the young dependent on parents. The remedy is based in the neurochemistry of sex which serves to dissolve belief structures in order to open the way for new patterns of understanding and behavior. Individuals experience these changes in various ways, such as falling in love, collegiate indoctrination, tribal bonding, brain washing, political or religious conversions, and related types of socialization. The highest forms of meaning for humans come through these social attachments.
Download or read book Our Self Organized Brains written by Osvaldo Agamennoni and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes the dynamic nature of the brain and its mechanisms to develop cognitive skills, specifically learning. It will facilitate the reader’s appreciation and understanding of many concepts linked to cognition using a systemic approach to neuroscience. It introduces concepts of feedback control systems and self-organized systems that allow brain dynamics to be approached systemically, facilitating a holistic comprehension. The book is written in plain language and uses a wide variety of examples to facilitate its reading and understanding. It will serve to promote transdisciplinary communication in readers interested in the study of the fundamental dynamic aspects involved in the human learning process, both individually and socially.
Download or read book Vulnerable Minds written by Liya Yu and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-16 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neuroscience research has raised a troubling possibility: Could the tendency to stigmatize others be innate? Some evidence suggests that the brain is prone to in-group and out-group classifications, with consequences from ordinary blind spots to full-scale dehumanization. Many are inclined to reject the argument that racism and discrimination could have a cognitive basis. Yet if we are all vulnerable to thinking in exclusionary ways—if everyone, from the most ardent social-justice advocates to bigots and xenophobes, has mental patterns and structures in common—could this shared flaw open new prospects for political rapprochement? Liya Yu develops a novel political framework that builds on neuroscientific discoveries to rethink the social contract. She argues that our political selves should be understood in terms of our shared social capacities, especially our everyday exclusionary tendencies. Yu contends that cognitive dehumanization is the most crucial disruptor of cooperation and solidarity, and liberal values-based discourse is inadequate against it. She advances a new neuropolitical language of persuasion that refrains from moralizing or shaming and instead appeals to shared neurobiological vulnerabilities. Offering practical strategies to address those we disagree with most strongly, Vulnerable Minds provides timely guidance on meeting the challenge of including and humanizing others.
Download or read book Memory Distortion written by Daniel L. Schacter and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Memory Distortion, contributions from a multidisciplinary team of eminent scholars form the basis of an exploration of a range of phenomena including: hypnosis, confabulation, source amnesia, flashbulb memories and repression.
Download or read book The Brains and Brawn Company How Leading Organizations Blend the Best of Digital and Physical written by Robert Siegel and published by McGraw Hill Professional. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Top Financial Times Recommended Business Book, The Brains and Brawn Company is the grounded, clear-sighted guide you need to blend digital and traditional business functions for long-term competitive advantage Business leaders are continually told they need to embrace digital disruption wholeheartedly to thrive in the 21st Century. Legacy companies, we hear, are all doomed to fail unless they double down on the latest digital innovations, and disruptors are ordained to take over the world. Digital innovation is the answer to everything. False! Nothing in life or business is ever that simple. In The Brains and Brawn Company: How Leading Organizations Blend the Best of Digital and Physical, venture capitalist and Stanford Business School lecturer Robert Siegel brings the digital innovation conversation back down to earth. He shows that, while important, digital is only part of the answer―and it’s never the only answer. The vast majority of successful leaders from both incumbents and disruptors focus as much on things like logistics, manufacturing, and distribution as they do on digital innovation. In fact, many established companies are successfully countering young upstarts in other creative ways, and many new organizations are learning from their older brethren. Siegel shows how to create lasting profits and growth in the smartest way possible: by creating a solid partnership between digital innovation and traditional business operations—in other words, by marrying brains and brawn. He lays out the core competencies that today’s industry leaders have mastered and explains how: Charles Schwab uses cutting-edge analytics to better serve millions of investors without violating its original code of values. Align Technology transformed orthodontia by developing creative new business models along with new products. Kaiser Permanente taps into the power of empathy to improve patient satisfaction while controlling costs. Instacart balances ownership and partnerships to balance the needs of four key constituencies. Target, Best Buy, and Home Depot found different ways to blend the best aspects of physical retail with innovative e-commerce. Desktop Metal is innovating high-volume yet affordable production methods that can revolutionize manufacturing. Filled with original research and case studies of Daimler, 23andMe, Instacart, AB InBev, Google, and many other companies, The Brains and Brawn Company: How Leading Organizations Blend the Best of Digital and Physical provides practical, proven insights and advice for bridging the gulf between digital vs. physical, disruptor vs. incumbent, startup world vs. Fortune 500, and tech culture vs. industrial culture. The Brains and Brawn Company: How Leading Organizations Blend the Best of Digital and Physical provides everything you need to set your company apart from your competitors in real and measurable ways—and take the lead in your industry for years to come.
Download or read book The Biological Mind written by Alan Jasanoff and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering neuroscientist argues that we are more than our brains To many, the brain is the seat of personal identity and autonomy. But the way we talk about the brain is often rooted more in mystical conceptions of the soul than in scientific fact. This blinds us to the physical realities of mental function. We ignore bodily influences on our psychology, from chemicals in the blood to bacteria in the gut, and overlook the ways that the environment affects our behavior, via factors varying from subconscious sights and sounds to the weather. As a result, we alternately overestimate our capacity for free will or equate brains to inorganic machines like computers. But a brain is neither a soul nor an electrical network: it is a bodily organ, and it cannot be separated from its surroundings. Our selves aren't just inside our heads -- they're spread throughout our bodies and beyond. Only once we come to terms with this can we grasp the true nature of our humanity.
Download or read book The Teenage Brain written by Frances E. Jensen and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller Renowned neurologist Dr. Frances E. Jensen offers a revolutionary look at the brains of teenagers, dispelling myths and offering practical advice for teens, parents and teachers. Dr. Frances E. Jensen is chair of the department of neurology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. As a mother, teacher, researcher, clinician, and frequent lecturer to parents and teens, she is in a unique position to explain to readers the workings of the teen brain. In The Teenage Brain, Dr. Jensen brings to readers the astonishing findings that previously remained buried in academic journals. The root myth scientists believed for years was that the adolescent brain was essentially an adult one, only with fewer miles on it. Over the last decade, however, the scientific community has learned that the teen years encompass vitally important stages of brain development. Samples of some of the most recent findings include: Teens are better learners than adults because their brain cells more readily "build" memories. But this heightened adaptability can be hijacked by addiction, and the adolescent brain can become addicted more strongly and for a longer duration than the adult brain. Studies show that girls' brains are a full two years more mature than boys' brains in the mid-teens, possibly explaining differences seen in the classroom and in social behavior. Adolescents may not be as resilient to the effects of drugs as we thought. Recent experimental and human studies show that the occasional use of marijuana, for instance, can cause lingering memory problems even days after smoking, and that long-term use of pot impacts later adulthood IQ. Multi-tasking causes divided attention and has been shown to reduce learning ability in the teenage brain. Multi-tasking also has some addictive qualities, which may result in habitual short attention in teenagers. Emotionally stressful situations may impact the adolescent more than it would affect the adult: stress can have permanent effects on mental health and can to lead to higher risk of developing neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression. Dr. Jensen gathers what we’ve discovered about adolescent brain function, wiring, and capacity and explains the science in the contexts of everyday learning and multitasking, stress and memory, sleep, addiction, and decision-making. In this groundbreaking yet accessible book, these findings also yield practical suggestions that will help adults and teenagers negotiate the mysterious world of adolescent development.
Download or read book Brain Facts written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Build Better Brains written by Martina Muttke and published by Business Expert Press. This book was released on 2020-09-23 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Build Better Brains is neither a leadership book nor a book on neuroscience. It merges the best of the two worlds to serve a new type of leader emerging with contemporary organizations. The exciting news is that leadership has become measurable in the brain. This opens a new perspective on “the biology of leadership”. Have you every wished to discover what lies inside of the box on top of your head? Are you aware that by reading this book you will forever change your brain, because your brain is an eternal construction site? Did you know that we have three brains? One brain in the brain, one in the heart, one in the gut? With Millennials and Generation Z becoming most of our workforce, the way we think about leadership is changing. Advances in neuroscience can prepare leaders to build a culture of trust and purpose for themselves and their teams. Build Better Brains is neither a leadership book nor a book on neuroscience. It merges the best of the two worlds to serve a new type of leader emerging with contemporary organizations. Build Better Brains: Offers practical, science-based applications for improving the efficiency of leadership in today’s fast-paced VUCA world; Applies the knowledge and tools of neuroscience as foundation for leading people and building better companies; Is based on simple concepts, utilizing the latest insights from both leadership and neuroscience, without missing out on scientific facts; Teaches, but also entertains: leadership is full of fights, fiction, failures, but should also be fun; Serves the common need in today’s over-engineered yet antiquated workplaces to discover the magic inside our brains. Leadership is born in the brain.
Download or read book States of Mind written by Roberta Conlan and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2007-08-10 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An all-star lineup of scientists takes you to the front lines of brain research. Are we born to be shy? Why do we remember some events so clearly and others not at all? Are creativity and depression somehow linked? Do our dreams really have deeper meanings? Now in paperback, here is a wonderfully accessible introduction to the most important recent findings about how our health, behavior, feelings, and identities are influenced by what goes on inside our brains. In this timely book, eight pioneering researchers offer lively and stimulating discussions on the most exciting discoveries as well as a new way of understanding our emotions, moods, memories, and dreams. Inside, you'll find: * J. ALLAN HOBSON, author of the groundbreaking The Dreaming Brain, leading a tour of dream states and explaining why we dream and what dream studies reveal about our minds * ERIC KANDEL, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine, taking us along the chain of biological events that create long-term memories, revealing how we stand at the brink of helping those who suffer from grave mental and memory disorders * STEVEN HYMAN, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, tracing the links between nature and nurture, particularly in addiction and mental illness, to explain the relationship between inherited tendencies and the impact of life experience * KAY REDFIELD JAMISON, bestselling author of An Unquiet Mind, explaining manic depression, its prevalence among gifted artists, writers, and musicians, and the societal questions raised by trying to eradicate the "depression gene" . . . and much, much more. Whether discussing the brain-body connection, the sources of emotion, or the ethereal world of dreams, States of Mind enables you to share in the very latest explorations into the nature and function of the human mind.
