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This comprehensive textbook provides an up-to-date and accessible account of the theories that seek to explain the complex relationship between brain and behaviour. Drawing on the latest research findings from the disciplines of neuropsychology, neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience and cognitive neuropsychology, the author provides contemporary models of neuropsychological processes. The book provides a fresh perspective that takes into account the modern advances of functional neuroimaging and other new research techniques. The emphasis at all times is on bridging the gap between theory and practice - discussion of theoretical models is framed in a clinical context and the author makes freq...
A collection of cutting-edge contributions on the idea of shared representations - information sharing between the brains of those involved.
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that allows a unique window on the relationship between mind and brain. The study of autism provides insight into the brain basis of the complex social interactions typical of human beings, since a profound impairment in social interactions is the hallmark of autistic disorders. While autism was first described almost 60 years ago, research into its cognitive and neurophysiological basis has intensified over the last two decades. Autism: Mind and Brain provides a comprehensive overview of currently conducted experiments, which are guided by bold theories that are being tested rigorously. With contributions from international leaders in autism research,...
Motor control has established itself as an area of scientific research characterized by a multi-disciplinary approach. Scientists working in the area of control of voluntary movements come from different backgrounds including but not limited to physiology, physics, psychology, mathematics, neurology, physical therapy, computer science, robotics, and engineering. One of the factors slowing progress in the area has been the lack of communication among researchers representing all these disciplines. A major objective of the current book is to overcome this deficiency and to promote cooperation and mutual understanding among researchers addressing different aspects of the complex phenomenon of m...
Shaun Gallagher presents a ground-breaking interdisciplinary account of human action, bringing out its essentially social dimension. He explores and synthesizes the different approaches of action theory, social cognition, and critical social theory. He shows that in order to understand human agency and the aspects of mind that are associated with it, we need to grasp the crucial role of context or circumstance in action, and the normative constraints of social and cultural practices. He also investigates issues concerning social cognition and embodied intersubjective interaction, including direct social perception and the role of narrative and communicative practices from an interdisciplinary perspective. Gallagher thereby brings together embodied and enactive approaches to action for the first time in this book and, in developing an alternative to standard conceptions of understanding others, he bridges social cognition and critical social theory, drawing out the implications for recognition, autonomy, and justice.
Provides a contemporary summary of the physiology and pathophysiology of the manipulative and exploratory functions of the human hand.
The burgeoning field of social neuroscience has begun to illuminate the complex biological bases of human social cognitive abilities. However, in spite of being based on the premise of investigating the neural bases of interacting minds, the majority of studies have focused on studying brains in isolation using paradigms that investigate offline social cognition, i.e. social cognition from a detached observer's point of view, asking study participants to read out the mental states of others without being engaged in interaction with them. Consequently, the neural correlates of real-time social interaction have remained elusive and may —paradoxically— represent the 'dark matter' of social ...
One remarkable ability of the human brain is to process large amounts of information about our surroundings to allow us to interact effectively with them. In everyday life, the most common way to interact with objects is by reaching, grasping, lifting and manipulating them. Although these may sound like simple tasks, the perceptual properties of the target object, such as its location, size, shape, and orientation all need to be processed in order to set the movement parameters that allow an accurate reach-to-grasp-to lift movement. Several brain areas work in concert to process this outstanding amount of visual information and drive the execution of a motor plan in just a few hundred millis...
This book presents interdisciplinary research that pursues the mutual enrichment of neuroscience and robotics. Building on experimental work, and on the wealth of literature regarding the two cortical pathways of visual processing - the dorsal and ventral streams - we define and implement, computationally and on a real robot, a functional model of the brain areas involved in vision-based grasping actions. Grasping in robotics is largely an unsolved problem, and we show how the bio-inspired approach is successful in dealing with some fundamental issues of the task. Our robotic system can safely perform grasping actions on different unmodeled objects, denoting especially reliable visual and visuomotor skills. The computational model and the robotic experiments help in validating theories on the mechanisms employed by the brain areas more directly involved in grasping actions. This book offers new insights and research hypotheses regarding such mechanisms, especially for what concerns the interaction between the dorsal and ventral streams. Moreover, it helps in establishing a common research framework for neuroscientists and roboticists regarding research on brain functions.
Attention in Action provides state-of-the-art discussion of the role of attention in action and of action in constraining attention.