NeuroScience Fiction
NeuroScience Fiction

Author: Rodrigo Quian Quiroga

Publisher: BenBella Books

Published: 2020-04-28

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1950665224

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What if science fiction stopped being fiction? Developments in neuroscience are turning sci-fi scenarios into reality, and causing us to revisit some of the philosophical questions we have been asking ourselves for centuries. Science fiction often takes its inspiration from the latest science . . . and our oldest questions. After all, the two are inextricably linked. At a time when advances in artificial intelligence are genuinely leading us closer to a computer that thinks like a human, we can't help but wonder: What makes a person a person? Countless writers and filmmakers have created futuristic scenarios to explore this issue and others like it. But these scenarios may not be so futuristic after all. In the movie Inception, a group of conspirators implants false memories; in Until the End of the World, a mad scientist is able to read dreams; in 2001: A Space Odyssey, a supercomputer feels and thinks like a person. And in recent years, the achievements described in leading scientific journals have included some that might sound familiar: implanting memories using optogenetics, reading the mind during sleep thanks to advanced decoding algorithms, and creating a computer that uses deep neural networks to surpass the abilities of human thought. In NeuroScience Fiction, neuroscientist and author Rodrigo Quiroga reveals the futuristic present we are living in, showing how the far-out premises of 10 seminal science fiction movies are being made possible by discoveries happening right now, on the cutting edge of neuroscience. He also explores the thorny philosophical problems raised as a result, diving into Minority Report and free will, The Matrix and the illusion of reality, Blade Runner and android emotion, and more. A heady mix of science fiction, neuroscience, and philosophy, NeuroScience Fiction takes us from Vanilla Sky to neural research labs, and from Planet of the Apes to what makes us human. This is a book you'll be thinking about long after the last page—and once you've read it, you'll never watch a sci-fi blockbuster the same way again.

Neuroscience in Science Fiction Films
Neuroscience in Science Fiction Films

Author: Sharon Packer, M.D.

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-11-20

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0786472340

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As the gap between science fiction and science fact has narrowed, films that were intended as pure fantasy at the time of their premier have taken on deeper meaning. This volume explores neuroscience in science fiction films, focusing on neuroscience and psychiatry as running themes in SF and finding correlations between turning points in "neuroscience fiction" and advances in the scientific field. The films covered include The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Robocop, The Stepford Wives, The Mind Snatchers and iconic franchises like Terminator, Ironman and Planet of the Apes. Examining the parallel histories of psychiatry, neuroscience and cinema, this book shows how science fiction films offer insightful commentary on the scientific and philosophical developments of their times.

Reading Science Fiction
Reading Science Fiction

Author: James Gunn

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-01-19

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1137078987

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Science Fiction is illuminated by world class scholars and fiction writers, who introduce the history, concepts and contexts necessary to understanding the genre. Their groundbreaking approach provides insights into today's SF world and makes learning how to read Science Fiction an exciting collaborative process for teachers and students.

Neurology and Literature, 1860–1920
Neurology and Literature, 1860–1920

Author: A. Stiles

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2007-09-28

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0230287883

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This collection demonstrates how late-Victorian and Edwardian neurology and fiction shared common philosophical concerns and rhetorical strategies. Between 1860 and 1920 witnessed unprecedented interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists and artists, finding common ground in the prevailing intellectual climate of biological determinism.

Diseases and Disorders in Contemporary Fiction
Diseases and Disorders in Contemporary Fiction

Author: James Peacock

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-04-17

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1135078629

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The essays in this collection address the current preoccupation with neurological conditions and disorders in contemporary literature by British and American writers. The book places these fictional treatments within a broader cultural and historical context, exploring such topics as the two cultures debate, the neurological turn, postmodernism and the post-postmodern, and responses to September 11th. Considering a variety of materials including mainstream literary fiction, the graphic novel, popular fiction, autobiographical writing, film, and television, contributors consider the contemporary dimensions of the interface between the sciences and humanities, developing the debate about the post-postmodern as a new humanism or a return to realism and investigating questions of form and genre, and of literary continuities and discontinuities. Further, the essays discuss contemporary writers’ attempts to engage the relation between the individual and the social, looking at the relation between the "syndrome syndrome" (referring to the prevalence in contemporary literature of neurological phenomena evident at the biological level) and existing work in the field of trauma studies (where explanations tend to have taken a psychoanalytical form), allowing for perspectives that question some of the assumptions that have marked both these fields. The current literary preoccupation with neurological conditions presents us with a new and distinctive form of trauma literature, one concerned less with psychoanalysis than with the physical and evolutionary status of human beings.

Brain Fiction
Brain Fiction

Author: William Hirstein

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780262083386

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The phenomenon of confabulation--the tendency to construct plausible-sounding but false answers and believe that they are true--and what it can tell us about the human mind and human nature.

Fiction as Research Practice
Fiction as Research Practice

Author: Patricia Leavy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-06-16

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1315428482

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Patricia Leavy, herself both a highly published qualitative researcher and a novelist, explores the overlaps and intersections between these two ways of understanding and describing human experience, including a methodological introduction and five stories showing these methods in action.

Mindscapes, the Geographies of Imagined Worlds
Mindscapes, the Geographies of Imagined Worlds

Author: George Edgar Slusser

Publisher: SIU Press

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9780809314546

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Eighteen essays plus four examples from the ninth annual J. Lloyd Eaton Conference on Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature at the University of California, Riverside. The concept of mindscape, Slusser and Rabkin explain, allows critics to focus on a single fundamental problem: "The constant need for a relation between mind and some being external to mind." The essayists are Poul Anderson, Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, Ronald J. Heckelman, David Brin, Frank McConnell, George E. Slusser, James Romm, Jack G. Voller, Peter Fitting, Michael R. Collings, Pascal J. Thomas, Reinhart Lutz, Joseph D. Miller, Gary Westfahl, Bill Lee, Max P. Belin, William Lomax, and Donald M. Hassler. The book concludes with four authors discussing examples of mindscape. The participants are Jean-Pierre Barricelli, Gregory Benford, Gary Kern, and David N. Samuelson.

Augmentation of Brain Function: Facts, Fiction and Controversy
Augmentation of Brain Function: Facts, Fiction and Controversy

Author: Ioan Opris

Publisher: Frontiers Media SA

Published: 2018-09-14

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 2889456153

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The Volume II is entitled “Neurostimulation and pharmacological approaches”. This volume describes augmentation approaches, where improvements in brain functions are achieved by modulation of brain circuits with electrical or optical stimulation, or pharmacological agents. Activation of brain circuits with electrical currents is a conventional approach that includes such methods as (i) intracortical microstimulation (ICMS), (ii) transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and (iii) transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). tDCS and TMS are often regarded as noninvasive methods. Yet, they may induce long-lasting plastic changes in the brain. This is why some authors consider the term “noninvasive” misleading when used to describe these and other techniques, such as stimulation with transcranial lasers. The volume further discusses the potential of neurostimulation as a research tool in the studies of perception, cognition and behavior. Additionally, a notion is expressed that brain augmentation with stimulation cannot be described as a net zero sum proposition, where brain resources are reallocated in such a way that gains in one function are balanced by costs elsewhere. In recent years, optogenetic methods have received an increased attention, and several articles in Volume II cover different aspects of this technique. While new optogenetic methods are being developed, the classical electrical stimulation has already been utilized in many clinically relevant applications, like the vestibular implant and tactile neuroprosthesis that utilizes ICMS. As a peculiar usage of neurostimulation and pharmacological methods, Volume II includes several articles on augmented memory. Memory prostheses are a popular recent development in the stimulation-based BMIs. For example, in a hippocampal memory prosthesis, memory content is extracted from hippocampal activity using a multiple-input, multiple-output non-linear dynamical model. As to the pharmacological approaches to augmenting memory and cognition, the pros and cons of using nootropic drugs are discussed.

Literature, Neurology, and Neuroscience: Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders
Literature, Neurology, and Neuroscience: Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders

Author:

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2013-12-11

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0444633871

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This well-established international series examines major areas of basic and clinical research within neuroscience, as well as emerging and promising subfields. This volume on the neurosciences, neurology, and literature vividly shows how science and the humanities can come together --- and have come together in the past. Its sections provide a new, broad look at these interactions, which have received surprisingly little attention in the past. Experts in the field cover literature as a window to neurological and scientific zeitgeists, theories of brain and mind in literature, famous authors and their suspected neurological disorders, and how neurological disorders and treatments have been described in literature. In addition, a myriad of other topics are covered, including some on famous authors whose important connections to the neurosciences have been overlooked (e.g., Roget, of Thesaurus fame), famous neuroscientists who should also be associated with literature, and some overlooked scientific and medical men who helped others produce great literary works (e,g., Bram Stoker's Dracula). There has not been a volume with this coverage in the past, and the connections it provides should prove fascinating to individuals in science, medicine, history, literature, and various other disciplines. - This book looks at literature, medicine, and the brain sciences both historically and in the light of the newest scholarly discoveries and insights