Best of
Neuroscience

1993

Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers


Robert M. Sapolsky - 1993
    Sapolsky's acclaimed and successful Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers features new chapters on how stress affects sleep and addiction, as well as new insights into anxiety and personality disorder and the impact of spirituality on managing stress.As Sapolsky explains, most of us do not lie awake at night worrying about whether we have leprosy or malaria. Instead, the diseases we fear--and the ones that plague us now--are illnesses brought on by the slow accumulation of damage, such as heart disease and cancer. When we worry or experience stress, our body turns on the same physiological responses that an animal's does, but we do not resolve conflict in the same way--through fighting or fleeing. Over time, this activation of a stress response makes us sick.

Clinical Neurology (LANGE Clinical Medicine)


David A. Greenberg - 1993
    The focus of the book and its easy readability will appeal to a full spectrum of healthcare providers....This edition of the classic book has been updated and revised to make it even more clinically relevant. A quick overview of each topic is provided to be translated into advanced patient therapy. Besides its quality, focus, and easy readability, the book is light and convenient to hold, read, and access at a moment's notice. 3 Stars."--Doody's Review Service No other book makes the link between basic neuroscience and current approaches in diagnosis and treatment easier to understand than Clinical Neurology. Distinguished by its practice-oriented approach to neurology based on the patients' presenting symptoms, this classic has been updated and revised to make it even more clinically-relevant and enjoyable to read. Features: Essential concepts are presented within the framework of problems encountered in a clinical setting for greater relevance to real-world practice Chapter outlines provide a quick overview of each topic Treatment protocols reflect the most recent advances in the field Advances in molecular biology and genetics are incorporated throughout to enhance understanding of neurologic disease A step-by-step description of the neurologic examination More than 200 tables and figures

Apprentice to Genius: The Making of a Scientific Dynasty


Robert Kanigel - 1993
    Robert Kanigel takes us into the heady world of a remarkable group of scientists working at the National Institutes of Health and the Johns Hopkins University: a dynasty of American researchers who for over forty years have made Nobel Prize- and Lasker Award-winning breakthroughs in biomedical science.

Associative Engines: Connectionism, Concepts, and Representational Change


Andy Clark - 1993
    At the heart of this reconception lies a shift toward a new and more deeply developmental vision of the mind - a vision that has important implications for the philosophical and psychological understanding of the nature of concepts, of mental causation, and of representational change.

Elements Of Graph Design


Stephen M. Kosslyn - 1993
    Stephen Kosslyn offers step-by-step guidelines for creating graphs that convey data in clear and attractive ways. This is also a "why it works" book. Kosslyn, a noted psychologist, bases his recommendations on extensive research into how the brain perceives and processes visual information. As he demonstrates, an awareness of the connections between the eye and the mind can make all the difference when creating or reading graphs. In Elements of Graph Design, Kosslyn helps you determine the appropriate format for a graph based on the data to be presented and your purpose in presenting it. He then focuses on the nuts and bolts of graph construction - the framework, the labels, the use of color and texture. Dozens of examples of effective and ineffective graphs are described and dissected in light of what is known about human visual perception. The result: easy-to-follow, unambiguous graphs that virtually anyone can understand immediately. Elements of Graph Design is for anyone who creates graphs, whether by computer or by pencil and paper. It is for anyone who relies on graphs in school work, presentations, or business reports. It is for anyone who wants a better understanding of the graphs used by newspapers and magazines, politicians, and advertisers (Kosslyn includes a chapter on how graphs can be used to misrepresent data). Finally it is for anyone interested in the mechanics of perception, memory, and cognition that come into play not just when we read graphs, but in any visual encounter.

Memory, Amnesia, and the Hippocampal System


Neal J. Cohen - 1993
    Cohen and Howard Eichenbaum bring together converging findings from neuropsychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science that provide the critical clues and constraints for developing a more comprehensive understanding of memory. Specifically, they offer a cognitive neuroscience theory of memory that accounts for the nature of memory impairment exhibited in human amnesia and animal models of amnesia, that specifies the functional role played by the hippocampal system in memory, and that provides further understanding of the componential structure of memory.The authors' central thesis is that the hippocampal system mediates a capacity for declarative memory, the kind of memory that in humans supports conscious recollection and the explicit and flexible expression of memories. They argue that this capacity emerges from a representation of critical relations among items in memory, and that such a relational representation supports the ability to make inferences and generalizations from memory, and to manipulate and flexibly express memory in countless ways. In articulating such a description of the fundamental nature of declarative representation and of the mnemonic capabilities to which it gives rise, the authors' theory constitutes a major extension and elaboration of the earlier procedural-declarative account of memory.Support for this view is taken from a variety of experimental studies of amnesia in humans, nonhuman primates, and rodents. Additional support is drawn from observations concerning the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the hippocampal system. The data taken from divergent literatures are shown to converge on the central theme of hippocampal involvement in declarative memory across species and across behavioral paradigms.

Rethinking Neural Networks: Quantum Fields and Biological Data


Karl H. Pribram - 1993
    How do brain processes become organized during decision making? That is, what are the neural antecedents that determine which course of action is to be pursued? Half of the contributions deal with modelling synapto-dendritic and neural ultrastructural processes; the remainder, with laboratory research findings, often cast in terms of the models. The interchanges at the conference and the ensuing publication also provide a foundation for further meetings. These will address how processes in different brain systems, coactive with the neural residues of experience and with sensory input, determine decisions.