Neuroculture: On the implications of brain science

Name: Neuroculture: On the implications of brain science | On the implications of brain science
Brand: OUP Oxford
Price: 80.99 EUR
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On the implications of brain science

Edmund T. Rolls(Autor*in)

OUP Oxford (Verlag)

1. Auflage

Erschienen am 5. Januar 2012

427 Seiten

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Beschreibung

Why do we have emotions? What are the bases of social behaviour? What is the relationship between the mind and the brain? How, and why, do we appreciate art? How do we make decisions? Are there biological foundations to ethical behaviour? Why do people follow religions, or believe in life after death? These wide-ranging, but important questions are just some of those considered in this exploration of the field of neuroscience, and how it can crucially inform our knowledge across a range of seemingly unrelated disciplines. 'Neuroculture' considers the implications of our modern understanding of how the brain works, how it was shaped by evolution, and how it can help us understand many mental issues central to everyday life. The book starts with a look at emotions and how they are important in our behaviour. It then considers social behaviour, looking at the adaptive differences between men and women. The next chapter considers emotion and rationality, and the mechanisms of decision making. In the following chapter, the author looks at philosophical issues, considering the relationship between the mind and brain, and considering whether the hardware/software distinction in a computer might tell us something aboutmind-brain interactions. The following chapter considers neuroaesthetics - the biological foundations of our appreciation of art - including visual art, literature, and music. Is art a useless ornament? Is music, to quote Steven Pinker, really just 'auditory cheescake'? After this, the author looks at the field of neuroeconomics - how neuroscience is informing us about how we make economic choices. The wide-ranging chapters that follow consider neuroethics - the biological foundations of ethical behaviour, neuropsychiatry - the connection between neural functioning and psychiatric disorders, neuroreligion - the possible biological foundations of religious belief, and neuropolitics - how our knowlege of the emotion and rational reasoning systems might help usdevelop strategies to solve political problems. Written to appeal to students and researchers across the biological sciences and humanities, Neuroculture will be fascinating reading for those in neuroscience, psychology, biology, medicine, economics, animal behaviour, psychiatry, philosophy, the arts - indeed anyone interested in why we behave as we do.

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Inhalt

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 The framework
1.2 Genetic influences on behaviour by adaptations of the brain
2 Neuroscience
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Neurons
2.3 Information encoded in the brain by neuronal firing rates
2.3.1 Reading the code used by single neurons
2.3.2 Understanding the code provided by populations of neurons
2.4 What neurons do: neuronal computation
2.5 Learning implemented in different neuronal network architectures
2.5.1 Learning implemented by associative synaptic modification
2.5.2 Pattern association memory
2.5.3 Autoassociation or attractor memory
2.5.4 Competitive networks
2.5.5 Stochastic dynamics: integrate-and-fire neuronal networks
2.5.6 Reasons why the brain is inherently noisy and stochastic
2.6 Short-term memory
2.7 Memory for the order of items in short-term memory
2.8 Long-term episodic memory and the hippocampus
2.8.1 Episodic memory is impaired by damage to the hippocampus
2.8.2 Hippocampal anatomy and episodic memory
2.8.3 A theory of the operation of hippocampal circuitry as a memory system
2.8.4 Forgetting
2.8.5 Memory reconsolidation
2.8.6 Memory and aging
2.9 Attention
2.10 Mechanisms of visual perception
2.11 Multiple learning systems in the brain
2.12 Decision-making
2.12.1 Decision-making by an attractor network
2.12.2 Confidence in the brain
2.12.3 Decision-making with multiple alternatives
2.12.4 The matching law
2.12.5 Symmetry-breaking
2.12.6 The evolutionary utility of probabilistic choice
2.12.7 Perceptual decision-making and rivalry
2.12.8 Memory recall as a stochastic process
2.12.9 Creative thought
2.12.10 Unpredictable behaviour
2.12.11 Dreams
2.12.12 Multiple decision-making systems in the brain
2.13 Sleep
2.14 Levels of explanation
2.15 Brain computation compared to computation on a digital computer
2.16 Understanding how the brain works
3 Neuroaffect
3.1 Introduction
3.2 A theory of emotion
3.3 Different emotions
3.4 Refinements of the theory of emotion
3.5 Other theories of emotion
3.5.1 The James-Lange and other bodily theories
3.5.2 Appraisal theory
3.5.3 Dimensional and categorical theories of emotion
3.5.4 Other approaches to emotion
3.6 Individual differences in emotion, personality, and emotional intelligence
3.7 Cognition and Emotion
3.8 Emotion, motivation, reward, and mood
3.9 The concept of emotion
3.10 The functions of emotion
3.10.1 Brain design and the functions of emotion
3.10.2 Selection of behaviour: cost-benefit 'analysis'
3.10.3 Further functions of emotion
3.10.4 The functions of emotion in an evolutionary, Darwinian, context
3.10.5 The functions of motivation in an evolutionary, Darwinian, context
3.10.6 Are all goals for action gene-specified?
3.11 Brain mechanisms of emotion
3.12 Brain mechanisms of value-based decision-making
3.13 Hunger, the desire to eat, and obesity
3.13.1 Food reward and appetite
3.13.2 Food reward and obesity
4 Neurosociality
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Altruism
4.2.1 Kin altruism
4.2.2 Reciprocal altruism
4.2.3 Stakeholder altruism
4.3 Competition within society, and between societies, in 'tribalism'
4.4 Mate selection, attractiveness, and love
4.4.1 Female preferences: factors that make men attractive and beautiful to women
4.4.2 Male preferences: what makes women attractive and beautiful to men
4.5 Pair-bonding and love
4.6 Parental attachment: beautiful children
4.7 Sperm competition and its consequences for sexual behaviour
4.8 Concealed ovulation and its consequences for sexual behaviour
4.9 Possible implications for human pair-bonding and love
5 Neuroreason
5.1 Dual routes to action
5.2 The implicit gene-specified goal route to action
5.3 The reasoning, rational, route to action
5.4 The Selfish Gene vs The Selfish Individual
5.5 Decision-making: the roles of the implicit and explicit systems
5.5.1 Selection between conscious vs unconscious decision-making, and free will
5.6 Conclusions
6 Neurophilosophy
6.1 Introduction
6.2 The mind-brain problem
6.3 Consciousness
6.3.1 Introduction
6.3.2 A theory of consciousness
6.3.3 Content and meaning in representations
6.3.4 Other related approaches to consciousness
6.3.5 Monitoring and consciousness
6.3.6 Conclusions on consciousness, and comparisons
6.4 Determinism
6.5 Free will
6.6 Conclusions
7 Neuroaesthetics
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Outline of a neurobiological approach to aesthetics
7.3 'Survival' or 'adaptation' selection (natural selection in a narrow sense)
7.4 Sexual selection
7.5 Beauty in men and women
7.6 Pair-bonding, love, and beauty
7.7 Parental attachment: beautiful children
7.8 Synthesis on beauty in humans
7.9 Selection of mental ability, and aesthetics
7.10 Fashion, and memes
7.11 The elegance and beauty of ideas, and solving problems in the reasoning system
7.12 Cognition and aesthetics
7.13 Wealth, power, resources, and reputation
7.14 The beauty of scenery and places
7.15 The beauty of music
7.16 Beauty, pleasure, and pain
7.17 Absolute value in aesthetics and art
7.18 Is what is attractive, beautiful and aesthetic?
7.19 Comparison with other theories of aesthetics
7.20 Conclusions
8 Neuroeconomics
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Reciprocal altruism, strong reciprocity, generosity, and altruistic punishment
8.2.1 Economic cooperation vs self-interest
8.2.2 Framing issues
8.2.3 Trust, and oxytocin
8.2.4 The neuroeconomics of cooperation
8.3 Prospect theory
8.4 Neuroeconomics, reward magnitude, expected value, and expected utility
8.4.1 Expected utility ~ expected value = probability multiplied by reward magnitude
8.4.2 Delay of reward, emotional choice, and rational choice
8.4.3 Reward prediction error, temporal difference error, and choice
8.5 Conclusions
9 Neuroethics
9.1 Biological underpinnings to ethics
9.2 Ethical principles arising from advantages for the phenotype versus for the genotype
9.3 The Social Contract
9.4 Conclusions
10 Neuropsychiatry
10.1 Schizophrenia
10.1.1 Cognitive symptoms
10.1.2 Negative symptoms
10.1.3 Positive symptoms
10.2 Obsessive-compulsive disorder
10.2.1 The symptoms
10.2.2 A hypothesis about obsessive-compulsive disorder
10.2.3 Glutamate and increased depth of the basins of attraction of attractor networks
10.3 Stochastic noise, attractor dynamics, and normal aging
10.3.1 NMDA receptor hypofunction
10.3.2 Dopamine
10.3.3 Impaired synaptic modification
10.3.4 Cholinergic function
10.4 Conclusions
11 Neuroreligion
11.1 Explanation and causality
11.1.1 The Hebb synapse and the detection of causality
11.1.2 Reasoning and the detection of causality
11.1.3 Failure to detect causality
11.2 Consciousness, the soul, everlasting life, immortality, and the fear of death
11.3 Power, status, and wealth of the clergy
11.4 Rules of social behaviour to help a society thrive and survive
11.5 Tribalism and religion
11.6 Fundamentalism and rationality
11.7 Advantages and dangers of religions
11.8 Extra-sensory perception
11.9 Religious experiences and brain activity
12 Neuropolitics
12.1 Introduction
12.2 The neurobiological forces and interests that influence political behaviour
12.2.1 Altruism
12.2.2 Competition
12.3 A rational politics
12.4 Conclusions
13 Conclusions
13.1 Introduction
13.2 The emotional selfish gene versus the rational selfish individual
13.3 A mechanistic approach to brain function
A
A.1 Rewards and punishers
A.2 Bayes' theorem
References
Index
B Colour Plates
Footnotes

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