It has long been known that aspects of behavior run in families; studies show that characteristics related to cognition, temperament, and all major psychiatric disorders are heritable. This volume offers a primer on understanding the genetic mechanisms of such inherited traits. It proposes a set of tools—a conceptual basis—for critically evaluating recent studies and offers a survey of results from the latest research in the emerging fields of cognitive genetics and imaging genetics.
The now-popular idea that emotions have an intelligent core (and the reverse, that intelligence has an emotional core) comes from the neurosciences and psychology. Similarly, the fundamental sexualization of the brain—the new interest in "essential differences" in male and female brains and behaviors—is based on neuroscience research and neuroimages of emotions.
The publication of the second edition of this handbook testifies to the rapid evolution of developmental cognitive neuroscience as a distinct field. Brain imaging and recording technologies, along with well-defined behavioral tasks—-the essential methodological tools of cognitive neuroscience—are now being used to study development. Technological advances have yielded methods that can be safely used to study structure-function relations and their development in children's brains.
Dyslexia research has made dramatic progress since the mid-1980s. Once discounted as a "middle-class myth," dyslexia is now the subject of a complex—and confusing—body of theoretical and empirical research. In Dyslexia, Learning, and the Brain, leading dyslexia researchers Roderick Nicolson and Angela Fawcett provide a uniquely broad and coherent analysis of dyslexia theory.
The uniqueness of shape as a perceptual property lies in the fact that it is both complex and structured. Shapes are perceived veridically—perceived as they really are in the physical world, regardless of the orientation from which they are viewed. The constancy of the shape percept is the sine qua non of shape perception; you are not actually studying shape if constancy cannot be achieved with the stimulus you are using. Shape is the only perceptual attribute of an object that allows unambiguous identification.
The explanatory power of economic theory is tested by the phenomenon of irrational consumption, examples of which include such addictive behaviors as disordered and pathological gambling. Midbrain Mutiny examines different economic models of disordered gambling, using the frameworks of neuroeconomics (which analyzes decision making in the brain) and picoeconomics (which analyzes patterns of consumption behavior), and drawing on empirical evidence about behavior and the brain.
This collection of foundational papers on sex differences in the brain traces the development of a much-invoked, fast-growing young field at the intersection of brain and behavior. The reader is introduced to the meaning and nature of sexual dimorphisms, the mechanisms and consequences of steroid hormone action, and the impact of the field on interpretations of sexuality and gender.
Interest in developing an effective communication interface connecting the human brain and a computer has grown rapidly over the past decade. The brain-computer interface (BCI) would allow humans to operate computers, wheelchairs, prostheses, and other devices, using brain signals only.
The role of genetic inheritance dominates current evolutionary theory. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, several evolutionary theorists independently speculated that learned behaviors could also affect the direction and rate of evolutionary change. This notion was called the Baldwin effect, after the psychologist James Mark Baldwin.
Since Darwin we have known that evolution has shaped all organisms and that biological organs—including the brain and the highly crafted animal nervous system—are subject to the pressures of natural and sexual selection. It is only relatively recently, however, that the cognitive neurosciences have begun to apply evolutionary theory and methods to the study of brain and behavior. This landmark reference documents and defines the emerging field of evolutionary cognitive neuroscience.
