Cortex and Mind: Unifying Cognition

Joaquin M. Fuster

ISBN 10: 019530084X / ISBN 13: 9780195300840

Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003

About this Item

8vo pp.294. Previous owner's stamp on half-title page.

Seller Inventory # 317762

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Cortex and Mind: Unifying Cognition
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, Oxford
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019530084X
• ISBN 13: 9780195300840
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: very good
• Dust Jacket Condition: no dustjacket
• Book Type: book
• Seller catalogs:
  • Health/Psychology

About this title

Synopsis

This book presents a unique synthesis of the current neuroscience of cognition by one of the world's authorities in the field. The guiding principle to this synthesis is the tenet that the entirety of our knowledge is encoded by relations, and thus by connections, in neuronal networks of our cerebral cortex. Cognitive networks develop by experience on a base of widely dispersed modular cell assemblies representing elementary sensations and movements. As they develop cognitive networks organize themselves hierarchically by order of complexity or abstraction of their content. Because networks intersect profusely, sharing commong nodes, a neuronal assembly anywhere in the cortex can be part of many networks, and therefore many items of knowledge. All cognitive functions consist of neural transactions within and between cognitive networks. After reviewing the neurobiology and architecture of cortical networks (also named cognits), the author undertakes a systematic study of cortical dynamics in each of the major cognitive functions--perception, memory, attention, language, and intelligence. In this study, he makes use of a large body of evidence from a variety of methodologies, in the brain of the human as well as the nonhuman primate. The outcome of his interdisciplinary endeavor is the emergence of a structural and dynamic order in the cerebral cortex that, though still sketchy and fragmentary, mirrors with remarkable fidelity the order in the human mind.

About the Author

Joaquin M. Fuster is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the School of Medicine, Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory in the Neuropsychiatric Institute, and Member of the Brain Research Institute, at the University of California, Los Angeles.