cognitive neuroscience the biology of the mind

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In this richly detailed analysis, Barbara Von Eckardt lays the foundations for understanding what it means to be a cognitive scientist. She characterizes the basic assumptions that define the cognitive science approach and systematically sorts out a host of recent and the controversies surrounding them. Von Eckardt takes issue with those who argue that there is no agreed-upon research paradigm and agreed-upon set of assumptions or methods in cognitive science, and with those who believe that the field should not be so committed. She argues that there is indeed a framework of shared commitments that includes basic questions guiding research, substantive assumptions constraining how those questions are to be answered, and methodological assumptions about how to find those answers. A Bradford Book

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Recent attempts to unify linguistic theory and brain science have grown out of recognition that a proper understanding of language in the brain must reflect the steady advances in linguistic theory of the last forty years. The first Mind Articulation Project Symposium addressed two main questions: How can the understanding of language from linguistic research be transformed through the study of the biological basis of language? And how can our understanding of the brain be transformed through this same research? The best model so far of such mutual constraint is research on vision. Indeed, the two long-term goals of the Project are to make linguistics and brain science mutually constraining in the way that has been attempted in the study of the visual system and to formulate a cognitive theory that more strongly constrains visual neuroscience.The papers in this volume discuss the current status of the cognitive/neuroscience synthesis in research on vision, whether and how linguistics and neuroscience can be integrated, and how integrative brain mechanisms can be studied through the use of noninvasive brain-imaging techniques.Contributors Noam Chomsky, Ann Christophe, Robert Desimone, Richard Frackowiak, Angela Friederici, Edward Gibson, Peter Indefrey, Masao Ito, Willem Levelt, Alec Marantz, Jacques Mehler, Yasushi Miyashita, David Poeppel, Franck Ramus, John Reynolds, Kensuke Sekihara, Hiroshi Shibasaki.

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When a chimpanzee stockpiles rocks as weapons or when a frog sends out mating calls, we might easily assume these animals know their own motivations–that they use the same psychological mechanisms that we do. But as Beyond the Brain indicates, this is a dangerous assumption because animals have different evolutionary trajectories, ecological niches, and physical attributes. How do these differences influence animal thinking and behavior? Removing our human-centered spectacles, Louise Barrett investigates the mind and brain and offers an alternative approach for understanding animal and human cognition. Drawing on examples from animal behavior, comparative psychology, robotics, artificial life, developmental psychology, and cognitive science, Barrett provides remarkable new insights into how animals and humans depend on their bodies and environment–not just their brains–to behave intelligently.

Barrett begins with an overview of human cognitive adaptations and how these color our views of other species, brains, and minds. Considering when it is worth having a big brain–or indeed having a brain at all–she investigates exactly what brains are good at. Showing that the brain’s evolutionary function guides action in the world, she looks at how physical structure contributes to cognitive processes, and she demonstrates how these processes employ materials and resources in specific environments.

Arguing that thinking and behavior constitute a property of the whole organism, not just the brain, Beyond the Brain illustrates how the body, brain, and cognition are tied to the wider world.

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Despite their apparently divergent accounts of higher cognition, cognitive theories based on neural computation and those employing symbolic computation can in fact strengthen one another. To substantiate this controversial claim, this landmark work develops in depth a cognitive architecture based in neural computation but supporting formally explicit higher-level symbolic descriptions, including new grammar formalisms. Detailed studies in both phonology and syntax provide arguments that these grammatical theories and their neural network realizations enable deeper explanations of early acquisition, processing difficulty, cross-linguistic typology, and the possibility of genomically encoding universal principles of grammar. Foundational questions concerning the explanatory status of symbols for central problems such as the unbounded productivity of higher cognition are also given proper treatment. The work is made accessible to scholars in different fields of cognitive science through tutorial chapters and numerous expository boxes providing background material from several disciplines. Examples common to different chapters facilitate the transition from more basic to more sophisticated treatments. Details of method, formalism, and foundation are presented in later chapters, offering a wealth of new results to specialists in psycholinguistics, language acquisition, theoretical linguistics, computational linguistics, computational neuroscience, connectionist modeling, and philosophy of mind.

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This book bridges the gap between models of human behavior that are based on cognitive task analysis and those based on neural networks. The author argues that these approaches are incomplete and not properly related to each other. His synthesis reconciles the very different conceptualizations of human memory assumed by these two approaches by assuming that ‘what the brain remembers’ is not a collection of symbols or neurons or even networks of either of these, but rather how to coordinate behavior in time, relating different modalities of conception and movement. A second premise is that behavior sequences are categorized, with perceptual categorizations (sounds, images) comprising the first order of categorization and conceptual categorizations of perceptions and actions in time comprising the second order. The conceptual categorizations are themselves sequenced and categorized, corresponding to the familiar classification hierarchies in cognitive models.

Inspired by Bartlett’s work, the author seeks to develop a theory of “process memory”–memory for experience in time. Following the methodology of situated cognition, he finds clues in the particulars of human activity, such as typing errors, how a computer interface is used, how a child learns to play in a swimming pool, odd limitations in language comprehension, and so on. Throughout, he examines existing (and often famous) cognitive and neural models with respect to these phenomena. In each case, he attempts to show that the experienced behavior can be understood as sequences of categories being reactivated, substituted, and composed. Ultimately, this analysis is shown to be the link that may lead to improvement of both symbolic and neurally based models of memory and behavior, with concomitant implications for cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science as a whole.

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“The most significant contribution yet to the rapidly growing literature of minds, brains, and consciousness.”—Steven Rose

In this masterful rebuttal to the prevailing neuroscientific arguments that seek to explain away consciousness, Merlin Donald presents “a sophisticated conception of a multilayered consciousness drawing much of its power from its cultural matrix” (Booklist). Donald makes “a persuasive case…for consciousness as the central player in the drama of mind” (Peter Dodwell), as he details the forces, both cultural and neuronal, that power our distinctively human modes of awareness. He proposes that the human mind is a hybrid product, interweaving a super-complex form of matter (the brain) with an invisible symbolic web (culture) to form a “distributed” cognitive network. This hybrid mind, he argues, is our main evolutionary advantage, for it allowed humanity as a species to break free of the limitations of the mammalian brain. “Donald transcends the simplistic claims of Evolutionary Psychology,…offering a true Darwinian perspective on the evolution of consciousness.”—Philip Lieberman

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