Download or read book Cognitive Aging written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For most Americans, staying "mentally sharp" as they age is a very high priority. Declines in memory and decision-making abilities may trigger fears of Alzheimer's disease or other neurodegenerative diseases. However, cognitive aging is a natural process that can have both positive and negative effects on cognitive function in older adults - effects that vary widely among individuals. At this point in time, when the older population is rapidly growing in the United States and across the globe, it is important to examine what is known about cognitive aging and to identify and promote actions that individuals, organizations, communities, and society can take to help older adults maintain and improve their cognitive health. Cognitive Aging assesses the public health dimensions of cognitive aging with an emphasis on definitions and terminology, epidemiology and surveillance, prevention and intervention, education of health professionals, and public awareness and education. This report makes specific recommendations for individuals to reduce the risks of cognitive decline with aging. Aging is inevitable, but there are actions that can be taken by individuals, families, communities, and society that may help to prevent or ameliorate the impact of aging on the brain, understand more about its impact, and help older adults live more fully and independent lives. Cognitive aging is not just an individual or a family or a health care system challenge. It is an issue that affects the fabric of society and requires actions by many and varied stakeholders. Cognitive Aging offers clear steps that individuals, families, communities, health care providers and systems, financial organizations, community groups, public health agencies, and others can take to promote cognitive health and to help older adults live fuller and more independent lives. Ultimately, this report calls for a societal commitment to cognitive aging as a public health issue that requires prompt action across many sectors.

Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Aging written by Ayanna K. Thomas and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 1019 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decades of research have demonstrated that normal aging is accompanied by cognitive change. Much of this change has been conceptualized as a decline in function. However, age-related changes are not universal, and decrements in older adult performance may be moderated by experience, genetics, and environmental factors. Cognitive aging research to date has also largely emphasized biological changes in the brain, with less evaluation of the range of external contributors to behavioral manifestations of age-related decrements in performance. This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of cutting-edge cognitive aging research through the lens of a life course perspective that takes into account both behavioral and neural changes. Focusing on the fundamental principles that characterize a life course approach - genetics, early life experiences, motivation, emotion, social contexts, and lifestyle interventions - this handbook is an essential resource for researchers in cognition, aging, and gerontology.

Download or read book The End of the Cognitive Empire written by Boaventura de Sousa Santos and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-16 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The End of the Cognitive Empire Boaventura de Sousa Santos further develops his concept of the "epistemologies of the South," in which he outlines a theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical framework for challenging the dominance of Eurocentric thought. As a collection of knowledges born of and anchored in the experiences of marginalized peoples who actively resist capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy, epistemologies of the South represent those forms of knowledge that are generally discredited, erased, and ignored by dominant cultures of the global North. Noting the declining efficacy of established social and political solutions to combat inequality and discrimination, Santos suggests that global justice can only come about through an epistemological shift that guarantees cognitive justice. Such a shift would create new, alternative strategies for political mobilization and activism and give oppressed social groups the means through which to represent the world as their own and in their own terms.

Download or read book Cognitive Surplus written by Clay Shirky and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of the breakout hit Here Comes Everybody reveals how new technology is changing us for the better. In his bestselling Here Comes Everybody, Internet guru Clay Shirky provided readers with a much-needed primer for the digital age. Now, with Cognitive Surplus, he reveals how new digital technology is unleashing a torrent of creative production that will transform our world. For the first time, people are embracing new media that allow them to pool their efforts at vanishingly low cost. The results of this aggregated effort range from mind-expanding reference tools like Wikipedia to life-saving Web sites like Ushahidi.com, which allows Kenyans to report acts of violence in real time. Cognitive Surplus explores what's possible when people unite to use their intellect, energy, and time for the greater good.

Download or read book The Aging Mind written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2000-04-18 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Possible new breakthroughs in understanding the aging mind that can be used to benefit older people are now emerging from research. This volume identifies the key scientific advances and the opportunities they bring. For example, science has learned that among older adults who do not suffer from Alzheimer's disease or other dementias, cognitive decline may depend less on loss of brain cells than on changes in the health of neurons and neural networks. Research on the processes that maintain neural health shows promise of revealing new ways to promote cognitive functioning in older people. Research is also showing how cognitive functioning depends on the conjunction of biology and culture. The ways older people adapt to changes in their nervous systems, and perhaps the changes themselves, are shaped by past life experiences, present living situations, changing motives, cultural expectations, and emerging technology, as well as by their physical health status and sensory-motor capabilities. Improved understanding of how physical and contextual factors interact can help explain why some cognitive functions are impaired in aging while others are spared and why cognitive capability is impaired in some older adults and spared in others. On the basis of these exciting findings, the report makes specific recommends that the U.S. government support three major new initiatives as the next steps for research.

Download or read book Cognitive Aging written by Denise Park and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As our society ages, the topic of cognitive aging is becoming increasingly important. This volume provides an accessible overview of how the cognitive system changes as a function of normal aging. Building on the successful first edition, this volume provide an even more comprehensive coverage of the major issues affecting memory, attention, language, speech and other aspects of cognitive functioning. The essential chapters from the first edition have been thoroughly revised and updated and new chapters have been introduced which draw in neuroscience studies and more applied topics. In addition, contributors were encouraged to ensure their chapters are accessible to students studying the topic for the first time. This therefore makes the volume appealing as a textbook on senior undergraduate and graduate courses.

Download or read book When I m 64 written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2006-02-13 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By 2030 there will be about 70 million people in the United States who are older than 64. Approximately 26 percent of these will be racial and ethnic minorities. Overall, the older population will be more diverse and better educated than their earlier cohorts. The range of late-life outcomes is very dramatic with old age being a significantly different experience for financially secure and well-educated people than for poor and uneducated people. The early mission of behavioral science research focused on identifying problems of older adults, such as isolation, caregiving, and dementia. Today, the field of gerontology is more interdisciplinary. When I'm 64 examines how individual and social behavior play a role in understanding diverse outcomes in old age. It also explores the implications of an aging workforce on the economy. The book recommends that the National Institute on Aging focus its research support in social, personality, and life-span psychology in four areas: motivation and behavioral change; socioemotional influences on decision-making; the influence of social engagement on cognition; and the effects of stereotypes on self and others. When I'm 64 is a useful resource for policymakers, researchers and medical professionals.

Download or read book The Origins of Monsters written by David Wengrow and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-24 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has often been claimed that "monsters"--supernatural creatures with bodies composed from multiple species--play a significant part in the thought and imagery of all people from all times. The Origins of Monsters advances an alternative view. Composite figurations are intriguingly rare and isolated in the art of the prehistoric era. Instead it was with the rise of cities, elites, and cosmopolitan trade networks that "monsters" became widespread features of visual production in the ancient world. Showing how these fantastic images originated and how they were transmitted, David Wengrow identifies patterns in the records of human image-making and embarks on a search for connections between mind and culture. Wengrow asks: Can cognitive science explain the potency of such images? Does evolutionary psychology hold a key to understanding the transmission of symbols? How is our making and perception of images influenced by institutions and technologies? Wengrow considers the work of art in the first age of mechanical reproduction, which he locates in the Middle East, where urban life began. Comparing the development and spread of fantastic imagery across a range of prehistoric and ancient societies, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and China, he explores how the visual imagination has been shaped by a complex mixture of historical and universal factors. Examining the reasons behind the dissemination of monstrous imagery in ancient states and empires, The Origins of Monsters sheds light on the relationship between culture and cognition.

Download or read book Cognitive Warfare in the Age of Unpeace Strategies Defenses and the New Battlefield of the Mind written by Josh Luberisse and published by Fortis Novum Mundum. This book was released on with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cognitive Warfare in the Age of Unpeace: Strategies, Defenses, and the New Battlefield of the Mind is a definitive examination of the emergent arena of cognitive warfare—a battlefield where consciousness and cognition are under siege. Rooted in the historical lineage of warfare, this seminal tome charts a course from the stratagems of yesteryear's influence operations to the digital subversions that define our current epoch. The book is structured to provide a layered understanding of the subject. Part I lays the foundation, explaining how the age of unpeace has given rise to a new form of warfare that exists between peace and war, where the battle for influence is paramount. Part II describes the modern tools at the disposal of state and non-state actors, including AI and neurotechnological advancements, and the ways in which these tools can manipulate and coerce on a mass scale. Through real-world case studies, Part III illustrates the practical application of cognitive strategies and the impact of such warfare on democracies, highlighting the need for robust countermeasures. In Part IV, the focus shifts to strategic insights, examining both offensive strategies for influence and subversion and the defensive strategies necessary to maintain cognitive sovereignty. The latter sections, Parts V and VI, provide a forward-looking perspective on building societal and governmental defenses against cognitive attacks. These include fostering societal resilience through public education, developing policy and governance frameworks, and addressing the ethical dimensions of cognitive defense. The final chapters speculate on the future trajectory of cognitive warfare, emphasizing the importance of international cooperation and the establishment of ‘cognitive peace’. With its conclusion and appendices providing a roadmap and additional resources, this book stands as an essential guide for policymakers, security experts, academics and citizens alike in understanding and countering the sophisticated threat of cognitive warfare in our increasingly interconnected world.

Download or read book Imagination Meditation and Cognition in the Middle Ages written by Michelle Karnes and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-12-20 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages, Michelle Karnes revises the history of medieval imagination with a detailed analysis of its role in the period’s meditations and theories of cognition. Karnes here understands imagination in its technical, philosophical sense, taking her cue from Bonaventure, the thirteenth-century scholastic theologian and philosopher who provided the first sustained account of how the philosophical imagination could be transformed into a devotional one. Karnes examines Bonaventure’s meditational works, the Meditationes vitae Christi, the Stimulis amoris, Piers Plowman, and Nicholas Love’s Myrrour, among others, and argues that the cognitive importance that imagination enjoyed in scholastic philosophy informed its importance in medieval meditations on the life of Christ. Emphasizing the cognitive significance of both imagination and the meditations that relied on it, she revises a long-standing association of imagination with the Middle Ages. In her account, imagination was not simply an object of suspicion but also a crucial intellectual, spiritual, and literary resource that exercised considerable authority.

Download or read book Mechanisms of Age cognition Relations in Adulthood written by Timothy A. Salthouse and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph is the written version of a series of talks delivered as recent MacEachran Lectures at the University of Alberta. The informal style of the lectures, and the inclusion of a relatively large number of figures, has been preserved in order to keep the monograph faithful to the concept of an individual attempting to integrate his own research into a reasonably coherent framework. Although the volume is very much a personal account of one individual's perspective, the studies reported are naturally a product of many collaborations as well as inspirations from colleagues. The fundamental issue addressed is how adult age differences in fluid or process aspects of cognitive functioning are to be explained. Several potential mediators are considered, with most of the emphasis devoted to the investigation of working memory and processing speed as variables mediating relations between age and cognition.

Download or read book Theoretical Perspectives on Cognitive Aging written by Timothy A. Salthouse and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The phenomenon of age-related cognitive decline has long been controversial, both in terms of mere existence, and with respect to how it is explained. Some researchers have dismissed it as an artifact of declining health or lower levels of education, and others have attributed it to general changes occurring in the external environment. Still other interpretations have been based on the "use it or lose it" principle -- known as the Disuse Hypothesis -- or on the idea that there are qualitative differences in either the structure or the process of cognition across the adult years. Perhaps the most popular approach at present relies on the information-processing perspective and attempts to identify the critical processing component most responsible for age-related differences in cognition. The primary purposes of this book are first to review the evidence of age-related differences in cognitive functioning and then to evaluate the major explanations proposed to account for the negative relations between age and cognition that have been established. Included is a discussion of theoretical dimensions and levels of scientific theorizing assumed to be helpful in understanding and evaluating alternative perspectives on cognitive aging. The various perspectives are then covered in detail and analyzed. The text concludes with observations about the progress that has been made in explaining cognitive aging phenomena, plus recommendations for research practices that might contribute to greater progress in the future.

Download or read book Reading Minds written by Mark Turner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The great adventure of modern cognitive science, the discovery of the human mind, will fundamentally revise our concept of what it means to be human. Drawing together the classical conception of the language arts, the Renaissance sense of scientific discovery, and the modern study of the mind, Mark Turner offers a vision of the central role that language and the arts of language can play in that adventure.

Download or read book The Age of Artificial Intelligence An Exploration written by Steven S. Gouveia and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With worldwide spending estimates of over $97 billion by 2023, it is no surprise that Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is one of the hottest topics at present in both the private and public spheres. Comprising of vital contributions from the most influential researchers in the field, including Daniel Dennett, Roman V. Yampolskiy, Frederic Gilbert, Stevan Harnad, David Pearce, Natasha Vita-More, Vernon Vinge and Ben Goertzel, ‘The Age of Artificial Intelligence: An Exploration’ discusses a variety of topics ranging from the various ethical issues associated with A.I. based technologies in terms of morality and law to subjects related to artificial consciousness, artistic creativity and intelligence. The volume is organized as follows: Section I is dedicated to reflections on the Intelligence of A.I., with chapters by Soenke Ziesche and Roman V. Yampolskiy, Stevan Harnad, Daniel Dennett and David Pearce. Next, Section II discusses the relationship between consciousness, simulation and artificial intelligence, with chapters by Gabriel Axel Montes and Ben Goertzel, Cody Turner, Nicole Hall and Steven S. Gouveia. Section III, dedicated to aesthetical creativity and language in artificial intelligence, includes chapters by Caterina Moruzzi, René Mogensen, Mariana Chinellato Ferreira and Kulvinder Panesar. The subsequent Section IV is on the Ethics of the Bionic Brain with the participation of Peter A. DePergola II, Tomislav Miletić and Frederic Gilbert, Aníbal M. Astobiza, Txetxu Ausin, Ricardo M. Ferrer and Stephen Rainey and Natasha Vita-More. Finally, Section V follows on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence with chapters by Federico Pistono and Roman V. Yamploskiy, Hasse Hämäläinen, Vernon Vinge and Eray Özkural. The Age of Artificial Intelligence is imminent, if not here already. We should ensure that we invest in the right people and the right ideas to create the best possible solutions to the problems of the present and prepare for those of the future. This edited volume will be of particular interest to researchers in the field of A.I. as well of those in Cognitive Science (Philosophy of the Mind, Neuroscience, and Linguistics), Aesthetics and Arts, Applied Ethics and Political Philosophy / Law. Students studying the aforementioned topics can also benefit from its contents.

Download or read book Cognitive and Brain Aging Interventions to Promote Well Being in Old Age Roadmap for Interventions Preventing Cognitive Aging written by Pamela M. Greenwood and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Cognitive Processes in Maturity and Old Age written by Jack Botwinick and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-11-21 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Health and Cognition in Old Age written by Anja K. Leist and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, the aim of research on aging has shifted from prolonging life to fostering healthy and cognitively robust old age. In order to improve the quality of life of older people, we need to better understand cognitive aging as well as bodily aging. Health and Cognition in Old Age assembles the cream of research across varied medical, mental health, and social disciplines, and demonstrates how this knowledge can lead to improved outcomes for older people. The first half of this expert volume discusses biomedical and life course factors in aging, particularly as they affect cognition and well-being in later life. From there, effective solutions are the focus: interventions and care programs to improve mental functioning and general quality of life, and current policy and practice ideas in promoting healthy, active, and cognitively robust aging. Together, these diverse chapters offer a multi-faceted approach to understanding and modifying what was formerly the inevitable course of growing old. A sampling of the coverage: How the aging process affects the immune system. Occupational gerontology – work-related determinants of old age health and functioning. Social, behavioral, and contextual influences on cognitive function and decline. Lifestyle factors in the prevention of dementia. Understanding long-term care outcomes: conventional and behavioral economics. Social capital, mental well-being, and loneliness in older people. For gerontologists, sociologists, social workers, health psychologists, and others working to improve older people’s lives, Health and Cognition in Old Age brings expertise, versatility, and confidence to the table.