Product Description: For most Americans, staying "mentally sharp" as they age is a very high priority. Declines in memory and decision-making abilities may trigger fears of Alzheimer's disease or other neurodegenerative diseases. However, cognitive aging is a natural process that can have both positive and negative effects on cognitive function in older adults - effects that vary widely among individuals...read more

Product Description: Diet and exercise have long been recognized as important components of a healthy lifestyle, as they have a great impact on improving cardiovascular and cerebrovascular functions, lowering the risk of metabolic disorders, and contributing to healthy aging...read more

Product Description: Higher Level Language Processes in the Brain is a groundbreaking book that explains how behavior research, computational models, and brain imaging results can be unified in the study of human comprehension. The volume illustrates the most comprehensive and newest findings on the topic...read more

We know that each of us is unique, but science has struggled to pinpoint where, precisely, our uniqueness resides. Is it in our genes? The structure of our brains? Our genome may determine our eye color and even aspects of our personality. But our friendships, failures, and passions also shape who we are. The question is: how?Sebastian Seung, a dynamic professor at MIT, is on a quest to discover the biological basis of identity. He believes it lies in the pattern of connections between the brain’s neurons, which change slowly over time as we learn and grow. The connectome, as it’s called, is where our genetic inheritance intersects with our life experience. It’s where nature meets nurture.Seung introduces us to the dedicated researchers who are mapping the brain’s connections, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. It is a monumental undertaking—the scientific equivalent of climbing Mount Everest—but if they succeed, it could reveal the basis of personality, intelligence, memory, and perhaps even mental disorders. Many scientists speculate that people with anorexia, autism, and schizophrenia are “wired differently,” but nobody knows for sure. The brain’s wiring has never been seen clearly.In sparklingly clear prose, Seung reveals the amazing technological advances that will soon help us map connectomes. He also examines the evidence that these maps will someday allow humans to “upload” their minds into computers, achieving a kind of immortality.Connectome is a mind-bending adventure story, told with great passion and authority. It presents a daring scientific and technological vision for at last understanding what makes us who we are. Welcome to the future of neuroscience.

Product Description: As the field of nutritional neuroscience has grown, both the scientific community and the general population have expressed a heightened interest in the effect of nutrients on behavior. Diet, Brain, Behavior: Practical Implications presents the work of a diverse group of scientists who collectively explore the broad scope of research in the field...read more

Attention is a key psychological construct in the understanding of human cognition, and the target of enormous efforts to elucidate its physiological mechanisms, as the wealth of literature―both primary and secondary―attests (for recent compilations see Itti, Rees, & Tsotsos, 2005; Paletta & Rome, 2008; Posner, 2004). But in addition to asking what attention actually is, decomposing and analyzing its varieties, or delimiting its neurobiological mechanisms and effects, in this volume we want to explore attention somewhat differently. We believe that a full-fledged theory of attention must consider its workings in the context of motivated, goal-directed, and environmentally constrained organisms. That attention is related to goal-directed behavior is not news. What the contri- tions to this volume do suggest, however, is the existence of fundamental links between attention and two key processes that are crucial for adapted conduct: go- directed behavior and cognitive control. Importantly, they show that these relations can be explored at multiple levels, including neurodynamical, neurochemical, evo- tionary, and clinical aspects, and that in doing so multiple methodological challenges arise that are worth considering and pursuing. The reader will find here, therefore, a selection of contributions that range from basic mechanisms of attention at the n- ronal level to developmental aspects of cognitive control and its impairments. Another trend that will become evident is that, in different ways, the authors stress the need to understand these issues as they unfold in natural behavior (both healthy and pathological), thus arguing for a more ecological approach to these questions.

Product Description: This book offers the first detailed, comprehensible scientific presentation of Confabulation Theory, addressing a pressing scientific question: How does brain information processing, or cognition, work? With only elementary mathematics as a prerequisite, this book will prove accessible to technologists, scientists, and the educated public...read more

Product Description: This collection presents the English-language reader for the first time with essays that are representative of Bernstein’s much-neglected revisionist period, 1901-1921. Bernstein himself suggested that this later work included significant new elements, indicating further progress in his liberal-socialist theory...read more