From Brains to Consciousness? Essays on the New Sciences of the Mind
Editorial Reviews
From Scientific American
"The vast sweep of advances in biological knowledge of the past half century has made the brain, and its ambiguous relationship to mind, science's last frontier," Rose writes. "Questions which for most of humanity's existence have been the province of philosophy and religion are now the stuff of day-to-day laboratory experiment." Rose, as director of the Brain and Behaviour Research Group at the Open University in England, was asked to organize a symposium on "Minds, Brains and Consciousness" at the 1996 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He did that and then went a step further, inviting the participants to rewrite their talks, in a way accessible to a general audience, as chapters for this book. The authors treat such intriguing subjects as memory, schizophrenia, consciousness and the aging of the brain. The work they describe has great portent for humanity. As Rose puts it: "To uncover the secrets of brain function offers the prospect of treating brain dysfunction, from the seemingly irreversible mental decline of Huntington's or Alzheimer's disease to the existential despair of schizophrenia. And if these conditions yield to molecular explanation, why should not also an even greater swath of problems in which there seems to be an uneasy fit between the individual mind and the society in which it is embedded?"
Book Description
Remarkable new findings in the neurosciences are leading to profound changes in our self-understanding. Neuroscientists now address some of the deepest problems of the human condition--from illnesses and disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia to the search for the nature of consciousness itself--in the belief that their science can say something useful about these processes and how to intervene in them. At the same time, by investigating the biological mechanisms involved in phenomena as varied as street violence, drug addiction, and sexual orientation, the new science raises complex ethical, legal, social, and medical questions.
From Brains to Consciousness? brings together fourteen of the world's leading neuroscientists, psychologists, computer modellers, and philosophers to offer up-to-the-minute insights into the intense debates that are taking place in this exciting area of research. Is memory a molecular process? Is schizophrenia a genetic disorder? What does the future hold for psychopharmacology? Can consciousness be computed? Is artificial intelligence a real prospect? Contributors investigate these and other questions in a clear and compelling way that will appeal both to specialists and to general readers interested in cutting-edge thought about the fundamentals of consciousness and human nature.
Contributors to the volume are Igor Aleksander, Richard Bentall, Tim Bliss, Tim J. Crow, Susan Greenfield, Richard Gregory, Mary Midgley, John Parnavelas, Roger Penrose, Trevor Robbins, Steven Rose, Wolf Singer, A. David Smith, and Larry R. Squire.
From Brains to Consciousness? Essays on the New Sciences of the Mind
From Brains to Consciousness? Essays on the New Sciences of the Mind,Steven Rose,Princeton University Press,0691004692,Artificial Intelligence - General,Brain,Cerebral Physiology,Cognitive Psychology,Consciousness,Life Sciences - Anatomy & Physiology,Life Sciences - Biology - General,Memory,Neuropsychology,Psychology,Science,Science/Mathematics
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