In the Light of Evolution
In the Light of Evolution

Author: National Academy of Sciences

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2014-05-19

Total Pages: 632

ISBN-13: 0309296439

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Humans possess certain unique mental traits. Self-reflection, as well as ethic and aesthetic values, is among them, constituting an essential part of what we call the human condition. The human mental machinery led our species to have a self-awareness but, at the same time, a sense of justice, willing to punish unfair actions even if the consequences of such outrages harm our own interests. Also, we appreciate searching for novelties, listening to music, viewing beautiful pictures, or living in well-designed houses. But why is this so? What is the meaning of our tendency, among other particularities, to defend and share values, to evaluate the rectitude of our actions and the beauty of our surroundings? What brain mechanisms correlate with the human capacity to maintain inner speech, or to carry out judgments of value? To what extent are they different from other primates' equivalent behaviors? In the Light of Evolution Volume VII aims to survey what has been learned about the human "mental machinery." This book is a collection of colloquium papers from the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium "The Human Mental Machinery," which was sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences on January 11-12, 2013. The colloquium brought together leading scientists who have worked on brain and mental traits. Their 16 contributions focus the objective of better understanding human brain processes, their evolution, and their eventual shared mechanisms with other animals. The articles are grouped into three primary sections: current study of the mind-brain relationships; the primate evolutionary continuity; and the human difference: from ethics to aesthetics. This book offers fresh perspectives coming from interdisciplinary approaches that open new research fields and constitute the state of the art in some important aspects of the mind-brain relationships.

Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward
Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward

Author: Jay A. Gottfried

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2011-03-28

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 142006729X

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Synthesizing coverage of sensation and reward into a comprehensive systems overview, Neurobiology of Sensation and Reward presents a cutting-edge and multidisciplinary approach to the interplay of sensory and reward processing in the brain. While over the past 70 years these areas have drifted apart, this book makes a case for reuniting sensation a

Plotinus and Epicurus
Plotinus and Epicurus

Author: Angela Longo

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-08-03

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1107124212

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Proposes a new way of understanding themes such as matter, knowledge, human happiness and the gods in Epicurus and Plotinus.

Action in Perception
Action in Perception

Author: Alva Noë

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2006-01-20

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0262640635

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"Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us," writes Alva Noë. "It is something we do." In Action in Perception, Noë argues that perception and perceptual consciousness depend on capacities for action and thought—that perception is a kind of thoughtful activity. Touch, not vision, should be our model for perception. Perception is not a process in the brain, but a kind of skillful activity of the body as a whole. We enact our perceptual experience. To perceive, according to this enactive approach to perception, is not merely to have sensations; it is to have sensations that we understand. In Action in Perception, Noë investigates the forms this understanding can take. He begins by arguing, on both phenomenological and empirical grounds, that the content of perception is not like the content of a picture; the world is not given to consciousness all at once but is gained gradually by active inquiry and exploration. Noë then argues that perceptual experience acquires content thanks to our possession and exercise of practical bodily knowledge, and examines, among other topics, the problems posed by spatial content and the experience of color. He considers the perspectival aspect of the representational content of experience and assesses the place of thought and understanding in experience. Finally, he explores the implications of the enactive approach for our understanding of the neuroscience of perception.

The Cambridge Companion to Rhythm
The Cambridge Companion to Rhythm

Author: Russell Hartenberger

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-09-24

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1108492924

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An exploration of rhythm and the richness of musical time from the perspective of performers, composers, analysts, and listeners.

Multisensory Flavor Perception
Multisensory Flavor Perception

Author: Betina Piqueras-Fiszman

Publisher: Woodhead Publishing

Published: 2016-04-14

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 008100351X

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Multisensory Flavor Perception: From Fundamental Neuroscience Through to the Marketplace provides state-of-the-art coverage of the latest insights from the rapidly-expanding world of multisensory flavor research. The book highlights the various types of crossmodal interactions, such as sound and taste, and vision and taste, showing their impact on sensory and hedonic perception, along with their consumption in the context of food and drink. The chapters in this edited volume review the existing literature, also explaining the underlying neural and psychological mechanisms which lead to crossmodal perception of flavor. The book brings together research which has not been presented before, making it the first book in the market to cover the literature of multisensory flavor perception by incorporating the latest in psychophysics and neuroscience. - Authored by top academics and world leaders in the field - Takes readers on a journey from the neurological underpinnings of multisensory flavor perception, then presenting insights that can be used by food companies to create better flavor sensations for consumers - Offers a wide perspective on multisensory flavor perception, an area of rapidly expanding knowledge

Origins of Architectural Pleasure
Origins of Architectural Pleasure

Author: Grant Hildebrand

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1999-06-30

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9780520215054

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This engaging study discusses ways in which architectural forms emulate some archetypal settings that humans have found appealing--and useful for survival--from ancient times to the present. 119 photos. 6 line figures.

The Entangled Brain
The Entangled Brain

Author: Luiz Pessoa

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-11-15

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0262544601

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A new vision of the brain as a fully integrated, networked organ. Popular neuroscience accounts often focus on specific mind-brain aspects like addiction, cognition, or memory, but The Entangled Brain tackles a much bigger question: What kind of object is the brain? Neuroscientist Luiz Pessoa describes the brain as a highly networked, interconnected system that cannot be neatly decomposed into a set of independent parts. One can’t point to the brain and say, “This is where emotion happens” (or any other mental faculty). Pessoa argues that only by understanding how large-scale neural circuits combine multiple and diverse signals can we truly appreciate how the brain supports the mind. Presenting the brain as an integrated organ and drawing on neuroscience, computation, mathematics, systems theory, and evolution, The Entangled Brain explains how brain functions result from cross-cutting brain processing, not the function of segregated areas. Parts of the brain work in a coordinated fashion across large-scale distributed networks in which disparate parts of the cortex and the subcortex work simultaneously to bring about behaviors. Pessoa intuitively explains the concepts needed to formalize this idea of the brain as a complex system and how to unleash powerful understandings built with “collective computations.”

From Perception to Pleasure
From Perception to Pleasure

Author: Robert J. Zatorre

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0197558283

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"Our species has been making music most likely for as long as we've been human. It seems to be an indelible a part of us. The oldest known musical instruments date back to the upper paleolithic period, some 40,000 years ago. Among the most intriguing of these are delicate bone flutes, seen in Figure 1.1, found in what is now southern Germany. (Conard et al. 2009). These discoveries testify to the advanced technology that our ancestors applied to create music: the finger holes are carefully bevelled to allow the musician's fingers to make a tight seal; and the distances between the holes appear to have been precisely measured, perhaps to correspond to a specific musical scale. This time period corresponds to the last glaciation episode in the northern hemisphere -- life could not have been easy for people living at that time. Yet time, energy, and the skills of craftworkers were expended for making abstract sounds "of the least use ... to daily habits of life". So, music must have been very meaningful and important for them. Why would that be?"--

Pleasures of the Brain
Pleasures of the Brain

Author: Morten L. Kringelbach

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0195331028

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Pleasure is fundamental to well-being and the quality of life, but until recently, was barely explored by science. Current research on pleasure has brought about ground-breaking developments on several fronts, and new data on pleasure and the brain have begun to converge from many disparate fields. The time is ripe to present these important findings in a single volume, and so Morten Kringelbach and Kent Berridge have brought together the leading researchers to provides a comprehensive review of our current scientific understanding of pleasure. The authors present their latest neuroscientific research into pleasure, describing studies on the brain's role in pleasure and reward in animals and humans, including brain mechanisms, neuroimaging data, and psychological analyses, as well as how their findings have been applied to clinical problems, such as depression and other disorders of hedonic well-being. To clarify the differences between their views, the researchers also provide short answers to a set of fundamental questions about pleasure and its relation to the brain. This book is intended to serve as both a starting point for readers new to the field, and as a reference for more experienced graduate students and scientists from fields such as neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, neurology, and neurosurgery.