Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness: Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience

I picked this book because I was looking for a book that did not require a background in neuroscience, but would still provide a somewhat detailed account of the structures of the brain, what function(s) they're involved in and how they work together. This book fit the bill quite well. It's a serious science book that covered this (and more), but is still readable. At a very high level the topics covered include the history of neuroscience, microstructures in the brain (such as neurons), the different parts of the brain and their functions, how these parts interact with each other, the interpretation of visual and audio input (both at a fine grained level and at the level of understanding language) and speech production. There are also several chapters covering long/short term memory, cognition, consciousness and more. One of the things I liked is that the topics are often covered from a very low level perspective of how the brain functions as an organ and from a higher level phenomenological perspective. Evidence for the former coming from things like fMRI scans and PET scans of people engaged in certain cognitive tasks. Evidence for the later coming from things like case studies of people that had certain parts of their brain damaged and how that affects their behavior or their ability to perform certain tasks. There were also some diagrams that allowed the reader to directly experience some of the phenomena being discussed, for example lateral inhibition and the brain's perception of ambiguous data. A short list of some of the things I found especially interesting include: the role of RNA and protein synthesis in the formation of long term memory, some parts of the adult brain have undifferentiated cells and the cerebellum has a role in cognitive functions (one of the few things I previously thought I knew about the brain was the cerebellum was only used for motor control), that olfactory information goes directly to the context (previously I only had a vague idea about the sense of smell being primitive in some sense), why the pleasure from anticipating an event often actually exceeds the pleasure of the event itself, how easily people get false memories, and the importance of sleep in forming long term memories. All-in-all I liked this book a lot, but in my opinion it did have a few short comings. While most of the diagrams were helpful, some were confusing. There was a silly mistake referring to Galileo using his telescope to look at the moons of "Venus". I also think a couple of the statements were questionable. One is a claim that out conceptual system is a consequence of the language we speak. This is a fairly vague statement. Depending on the meaning of "conceptual system" its truth could be anywhere from obviously true to obviously false. Another is that it's stated that the main character of studies of executive functions of the brain tends to be reductionistic in nature, and it's stated that this is unfortunate. No reasons for t

Yes this is an introductory text with the necessary starting points on the origins, importance of, and framework for studying cognitive neuroscience. And like introductory texts on neuroscience, it breaks down brain functions into separate chapters (e.g., vision, hearing, language, memory). But that's where the similarities with typical texts end. None of the chapters are dry; there is typically a conversational tone and always, a focus on the big picture - how the mind works. They add just enough clinical data and interesting asides to enrich the material without bogging it or the reader down. There is no skimping on illustrations and imaging and this enhances the material even further. The end result is that by the end of each chapter you know the material very well and wouldn't you know it, you've started thinking about how the mind really works and some of the philosophical implications of brain function. That's more than I expect from most textbooks, so I think the authors are being a bit modest in calling this book an introduction to cognitive neuroscience; it is that and much more.

I am a clinical psychiatrist and neuroscience aficionado who happens to be friends with one editor and one writer of COGNITION, BRAIN, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. Naturally, nothing in my social relationships with these two principles will influence in the least my objective and judicious review of this volume. Ah, this last sentence! Do you think it is likely to be true or false or somewhere in between? The current scientific understanding of these kind of cognitive ambiguities, and a plethora of other topics, is well served in this uniformly careful account of contemporary studies of mind and brain. As Dr. Baars asserts in the Preface, modern neuroscience is a "marriage of the cognitive and brain sciences". Identify some of the many academic disciplines attending the wedding party, and you will find, among the usual suspects, some brand-new, still wet behind the ears areas of study like neurotheology, theoretical neurobiology and array tomography. How will they ever communicate with the reader? Fortunately, the two editors qua event planners are more than up to the task and express in clear sentences the broad themes emerging from the multi-disciplinary babel. The textbook's organization follows a conventional course in order to follow "the gentlest learning curve possible": Mind and brain - Bernard J. Baars. A framework - Bernard J. Baars. Neurons and their connections - Bernard J. Baars. The tools: Imaging the living brain - Bernard J. Baars and Thomas Ramsoy. The brain - Bernard J. Baars. Vision - Frank Tong and Joel Pearson. Hearing and speech - Nicole M. Gage. Attention and consciousness - Bernard J. Baars. Learning, memory and knowledge - Morris Moscovitch, Jason M. Chein, Deborah Talmi, and Melanie Cohn. Thinking and Problem Solving - Bernard J. Baars. Language - Bernard J. Baars. Goals, executive control, and action - Elkhonon M. Goldberg and Dmitri H. Bougakov. Emotion - Katharine McGovern. Social Cognition: Perceiving the mental states of others - Katharine McGovern. Development - Nicole M. Gage and Mark H. Johnson. Appendices. A. Neural Models: a Route to Cognitive Brain Theory - Igor Aleksander. B. Methods for observing the living brain - Thomas Ramsoy, Daniela Balslev, and Olaf Paulson. The 16 authors of these chapters bring not only outstanding expertise but scholarly passion to their subjects. The two editors have done a masterful job insuring the writing is done at similar levels of detail and generalization, helped by the fact that the senior editor wrote seven and co-authored one of the 15 chapters. Fortunately, Dr. Baars' writing (he is well known as the author of A COGNITIVE THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS) remains among the best organized and most lucid of modern neuroscientists. The book pays homage to William James. In 1890, James was a committed empiricist with command of the then-current literature of the emerging field of scientific psychology. The page in the Reference section of CBC which begins with Ja

I couldn't agree more with the editorial reviews of this book. It is excellent! I'm reading the book just out of interest in the subject matter and I'm not involved professionally with neurology. I have recently read several books on the topic though and that list would include: . Mapping the Mind - Rita Carter's excellent survey of brain functions (similar in some ways to this book and really excellent!). . Exploring Consciousness - Another very good Rita Carter text. . The Neuron - Cell and Molecular Biology - Irwin Levitan and Leonard K Kaczmarek's 500+ page non-light reading but fascinating book on neurons. . Quest for Consciousness - Christopher Koch's (and Francis Crick's) insightful search for the neural correlates of consciousness. . Wider Than The Sky - Gene Edelman's equally fascinating perspective on the same type of research. . In Search of Memory - Eric Kandel's part autobiography, part neurology book. . Etc. Each of those books were wonderful and I plan on going back and reading them again just to see how my perspective has changed from what I've learned since the last time. But, if I had to pick one book to provide a survey of how the brain is organized and functions I believe this is the book I would chose. It is actually the first textbook I can remember reading in the past 40 years but it didn't remind me of the textbooks of that era. Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness has the following assets: . It is well organized and well indexed. . The writing style seems to take advantage of the authors' understanding of the learning process. . It provides more than a casual introduction to each of the topics it covers. . I thought it provided a balanced view of conflicting theories and approaches, giving the pros and cons of each. . The book is extremely well illustrated throughout. Each illustration seems very thoughtfully composed and selected. . It should, as the editorial reviews suggest, appeal to a range of readers from "student through established researcher." There are some typographical problems but they are minor (e.g. References to Appendix C - which doesn't exist). I ordered the book before its release date and actually received it before June 11th so I can imagine typos happening. There appears to be extensive support for the material on the publisher's website but I haven't checked that out as yet. So I'm really writing this to thank the Bernard Baars and Nicole Gage for providing such amazing material. It is really outstanding and even though it is expensive I would say without hesitation that it is more than worth its price!