Wet Mind
by By Kosslyn, Stephen M. and Koenig, Olivier
Category: Psychology , General

How do our brains allow us to recognize objects and locate them accurately in space, use mental imagery to remember yesterday's breakfast, read, understand speech, learn to dance, and recall a new telephone number? Recent breakthroughs in brain-scanning and computing techniques have allowed researchers to plumb the secrets of the healthy brain's operation; simultaneously, much new information has been learned about the nature and causes of neuropsychological deficits in animals and humans following various sorts of brain damage in different locations. Discoveries in neurobiology, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and medicine have converged, giving us for the first time more than a glimpse of how the brain goes about the business of thinking and perceiving.In this first comprehensive, integrated, and accessible overview of recent insights into how the brain gives rise to mental activity, the authors, internationally recognized authorities, explain the fundamental concepts behind, and the key discoveries that draw on, neural network computer models, various brain-scanning techniques, neurophysiological studies of animals, behavioral studies, and studies of neurological patients. Integrating very different sorts of information and ideas, they show how the emerging field of cognitive neuroscience is much more than the sum of its parts. Considering individual abilities one at a time, we see how the mechanisms that underlie each one are subsumed in other, more complex abilities. Kosslyn and Koenig examine, as well, a large number of syndromes that occur following brain damage, and account for them according to an analysis of the operation of a normal brain. Based on this analysis, the authors lay out an innovative new approach to patient rehabilitation. Case studies and vivid examples bring the material to life.In addition, Kosslyn and Koenig present an intriguing theory of consciousness. They provide a fascinating look at how emotions are stored in memory, and they examine the possible functions that our emotions serve. In their final chapter, the authors draw some compelling conclusions about how the brain has come to produce the mind.Readers of Wet Mind will follow an adventurous course through newly opened territory, at the end of which they will have a clearer vision of how far we have come in our understanding of the mind/brain and how far we have to go.