Best of
Neuroscience

1987

Neural Darwinism: The Theory Of Neuronal Group Selection


Gerald M. Edelman - 1987
    Its central idea is that the nervous system in each individual operates as a selective system resembling natural selection in evolution, but operating by different mechanisms. By providing a fundamental neural basis for categorization of the things of this world it unifies perception, action, and learning. The theory also completely revises our view of memory, which it considers to be a dynamic process of recategorization rather than a replicative store of attributes. This has deep implications for the interpretation of various psychological states from attention to dreaming. Neural Darwinism ranges over many disciplines, focusing on key problems in developmental and evolutionary biology, anatomy, physiology, ethology, and psychology. This book should therefore prove indispensable to advanced undergraduate and graduate students in these fields, to students of medicine, and to those in the social sciences concerned with the relation of behavior to biology. Beyond that, this far-ranging theory of brain function is bound to stimulate renewed discussions of such philosophical issues as the mind-body problem, the origins of knowledge, and the perceptual basis of language.

Neuroanatomy: An Atlas of Structures, Sections, and Systems


Duane E. Haines - 1987
    It combines full-color anatomical illustrations with over 200 MRI, CT, MRA, and MRV images to clearly demonstrate anatomical-clinical correlations.This edition contains many new MRI/CT images and is fully updated to conform to Terminologia Anatomica. Fifteen innovative new color illustrations correlate clinical images of lesions at strategic locations on pathways with corresponding deficits in Brown-Sequard syndrome, dystonia, Parkinson disease, and other conditions. The question-and-answer chapter contains over 235 review questions, many USMLE-style.Interactive Neuroanatomy, Version 3, an online component packaged with the atlas, contains new brain slice series, including coronal, axial, and sagittal slices.

Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs


Michael A. Persinger - 1987
    The author skillfully blends modern neurophysiology with critical behavioral psychology to offer an objective explanation for why people believe in God. This provocative and scholarly work will interest psychologists, neuroscientists, clergy, and anyone studying mystical experience.

What the Hands Reveal about the Brain


Howard Posner - 1987
    What the Hands Reveal About the Brain provides dramatic evidence that language is not limited to hearing and speech, that there are primary linguistic systems passed down from one generation of deaf people to the next, which have been forged into antonomous languages and are not derived from spoken languages.