Wet Mind: The New Cognitive Neuroscience - Softcover

Kosslyn, Stephen Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0028740858 ISBN 13: 9780028740850

Publisher: Free Press, 1995

Synopsis

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. In this first comprehensive, integrated, and accessible overview of recent insights into how the brain gives rise to mental activity, the authors explain the fundamental concepts behind and the key discoveries that draw on neural network computer models, brain scans, and behavioral studies. Drawing on this analysis, the authors also present an intriguing theory of consciousness. In addition, this paperback edition contains an epilogue in which the authors discuss the latest research on emotion and cognition and present new information on working memory.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen M. Kosslyn is Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and is associate editor of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Olivier Koenig is Maitre Assistant at the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the University of Geneva.

From Kirkus Reviews

``Cognitive neuroscience'' is the name of the game, which Harvard psychologist Kosslyn and Univ. of Geneva colleague Koenig equate to ``wet mind.'' The ``wet'' alludes to understanding how the brain really works (equating brain function to mind), and not, as with ``dry mind,'' to designing computers or models of artificial intelligence to perform visual perception or reasoning tasks. The computer designs and experiments the authors describe, then, are based on neuronal networks and parallel-processing systems rather than the sequential mode of operation of your ordinary PC. Their constructs of how we see or hear or read or remember are based on breaking the process into component subsystems and relating these systems to anatomical sites and pathways in the brain. Finally, as a partial test of their hypotheses, they use the data from patients with brain lesions to relate loss of function to damage in a particular subsystem (or systems). This is heady stuff, embodying at the outset five principles: the brain works by a division of labor; it expresses ``weak'' modularity (its components are not independent and, while they may be anatomically close, may include distant elements as well); the systems operate under ``weak'' constraints (they may be tuned to some inputs but accept others as well); parallel processing is the mode; and the brain is opportunistic, so that, for example, parts controlling fine movements may be applied to doing serial arithmetic problems too. The authors provide detailed accounts of how computer networks have been used to model visual perception and thinking, reading, language, movement, and memory, and how they may apply to emotion, consciousness, and other mental phenomena. Exciting, important research that's on the right track: It's about time that neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and computers got together. Now if they could only clean up the language (``The property lookup and categorical-to-coordinate conversion subsystems are probably implemented in the frontal lobes....''). -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0028740858
• ISBN 13: 9780028740850
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 624