(Part 3) Best books about neuropsychology according to redditors
We found 1,006 Reddit comments discussing the best books about neuropsychology. We ranked the 238 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 41-60. You can also go back to the previous section.
Yes, yes yes.
The problem is that, compared to us, that the child having a temper tantrum over feeling inconvenienced and uncomfortable is 10 times taller than us, and can wipe us out with a single swing of its arm.
It's like the way school integration is happening in Hartford, Connecticut. It simply didn't work to make white families integrate schools through busing.They get "uncomfortable," cite something like test scores, and move farther away.
In Hartford, they used the money won in court over segregated schools to remake their schools into specialized magnet schools and marketing the hell out of them, so white suburban families would choose to send their kids into the city, achieving the goal of integration in an indirect but effective way.
With most people, we have to find the indirect way to effect change. There are few people in this world who can face their deepest flaws and have the courage to change. The number 1 response to a challenge of our beliefs is defensiveness and withdrawal. (I think I found that in [this book about the brain] (https://www.amazon.com/Makes-Brain-Happy-Should-Opposite/dp/1616144831/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=sharpbrains-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325), but it was from the library and it's been awhile.)
Although my experience so far has actually been different from what you've seen--in a super liberal area of a blue city in a blue state, white people I know have been trying to figure out what to do non-stop, and there were walk-outs at several majority high schools and universities.
Delusions of Gender by neuroscientist & academic psychologist Cordelia Fine is the best place to start if you're looking for a rigorously scientific and empirical introduction. It's also very cheap in the Amazon kindle store.
> my brain hates it when I'm any type of happy
That reminds me of a book I read called What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite. It's a great read, and gives some good insight into why we do this to ourselves.
HoW hAvE wE lEt ScIeNtIfIc StUdY bEcOmE hAtE sPeEcH?????
Where to begin...
First, we need to work on definitions.
What do you mean by "psychology"?
I mean experimental psychology. Are you referring to clinical?
Even within the two camps, there is much disagreement on the nature and direction of psychological research. This is good, insofar as this promotes discussion and different approaches, but also may lead to disagreements about the general positions.
Regarding the "Cartesian mistake", I don't see it. If anything, psychology has been too bound by its history and focus on previous social research, so much so that Freud still claims some relevance amongst a few (although diminishing) adherents; this was much more the case with behaviorism, and introspectionism before it (to which behaviorism was a reaction); just as in any other field of human endeavor, there are trends. But being blind to the history of social research, that's just not true.
Regarding freud's work, his key error was overgeneralizing. From a small, self-selected group, he generalized his findings to the general population. Of course, we still do this to a degree (e.g., college students, generalizing to the general population, and in fact, there are attempts to counteract this trend), but Freud's problem was to claim that this was an inherently necessary part of ALL subconscious processes, and in fact, pushed to delegitimize (and in some cases, destroy) those who disagreed with him.
I quote from this text regaring my position on Freud:
**
Freudian theory is now, at this point of time, extremely controversial and there is a lot of well-known criticisms and attacks on Freud. This is just actually an excellent book on The Memory Wars by Frederick Crews, which--and Frederick Crews is one of the strongest and most passionate critics of Freud. And the problems with Freud go like this. There are two ways you could reject a theory. There are two problems with the scientific theory. One way you could reject a theory is that it could be wrong. So, suppose I have a theory that the reason why some children have autism, a profound developmental disorder, is because their mothers don't love them enough. This was a popular theory for many years. It's a possible theory. It just turns out to be wrong but another way--And so one way to attack and address a scientific theory is to view it as just to see whether or not it works. But there's a different problem a theory could have. A theory could be so vague and all encompassing that it can't even be tested. And this is one of the main critiques of Freud. The idea could be summed up by a quotation from the physicist Wolfgang Pauli. And Pauli was asked his opinion about another physicist. And Pauli said this: "That guy's work is crap. He's not right. He's not even wrong." And the criticism about Freud is that he's not even wrong.
**
Yes, he spurred the imagination, and yes, he led to many insights and avenues of future research. This is why he is still revered and studied.
But his actual views are simply not tenable today. It's not a case of disavowing the history of social research: it's just not compatible with the modern understanding of the mind and the contemporary world.
You may claim this is unfairly delegitimizing the pre-scientific worldview, but that is not the aim of psychological research, either intentionally or unintentionally.
To address your next point (related to the above), your critique of psychology's view of "underlying mechanisms" is itself unjust, for the following reasons:
We cannot claim to know what we cannot know. Yes, there are people who happily overgeneralize their findings to support fundamental mechanisms of cognition and social interaction, but this is generally considered a cardinal sin of research (and in fact, those who, like Skinner and Watson before him, who claim to have a fundamental understanding, are well-deservingly supplanted). Peer review, supported by empirical data.
Research is often on the obvious, because the whole point is to investigate thoroughly what we assume to know, but often do not really know. For every claim that drinking causes people to make risky choises (obvious), there is a finding that we do not pay attention to nearly as much as we think we do (nonobvious). You have to investigate everything.
As for lack of theory, we cannot claim to know something that we don't. For example, we do not have a comprehensive theory of consciousness. Not for lack of candidates, but usually from those less respectful of the scientific process. You have many charlatans who claim to have some fundamental insight to the nature of consciousness, but upon inspection, we find that much of this is just wishful thinking, self-serving biases. I can site too many examples to list here, but we continuously see case after case of people who claim to have some fundamental insight or theory, only for it to fall apart upon inspection.
It seems you are focusing on social research in a very different function from the generally understood function of experimental psychology. Social research is, IMHO, largely, storytelling. Following Dennett's heterophenomenology, a social researcher looks at the data from an anthropological position.... as a "narrative" or "text", and thus seeks internal consistency and plausible explanatory mechanisms as one would do a literary analysis.
However, all we can work with is pre-existing data with "historical experiments". It is both implausible and unethical to consider infecting people with the Plague to see its effects on a particular society, so you have to work with what you have.
Experimental psychology is different. You may disagree with the possibility of finding underlying mechanisms, but the reality of contemporary research is that we are able to determine mechanisms in different cognitive, and even social systems, surprisingly well. If they seem pedantic, it's because you cannot claim to overreach, without being shot down by your peers for overgeneralizing.
This is good. In fact, this is essential to the pursuit of knowledge.
And what kind of knowledge is this? To paraphrase Chris Frith (whose book I highly recommend if you really want to get to the crux of this argument, of the role of contemporary psychological research), this is to develop causal models of phenomena, and revise them as new information becomes available. The fact that we can do this at all is surprising, and this led to the "cognitive revolution" in psychology. Today, this means that we have the benefit of empirical, quantitative data, rather than simply introspective reports.
You see this as a negative; I see this as a positive. From my understanding of your words, it seems you think this is a form of disrespect to the history of social research. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, this is building on previous generations, but at the same time, cognisant that we cannot hold on to models that don't match the reality of the data.
As Feynman once said (paraphrasing), if your theory doesn't agree with the data, then you need to throw away the theory.
In terms of ballpark, pray tell, what is the correct ballpark? You seem hell-bent on suggesting that contemporary psychology has it completely wrong, but you haven't said how.
The "right ballpark", in this case, is the ability for the data to lead the discussion, and to not get ahead of yourself. Right now, psychology is at the bean-counting stage, collecting data. This is good. In previous generations, psychology, as well as social research in general, has claimed too much... it's been far too ambitious in its claims, and generally focused more on theoretical elegance than any adherence to the empirical evidence.
You may claim I suffer from physics envy, but this model works extremely well for those areas wherein it is available, particularly in experimental psychology. For areas outside of direct experimentation, we can causal models in a more heterophenomenological manner, but all the while maintaining both rigor and humility in suggesting what one's model can (and more importantly, CAN'T) explain.
This is the problem with Freud, and similar models. They explain too much, without explaining anything.
I'm sticking by my claims. I've spoken with far too many social researchers (even dated one) to know that we're never going to agree on this. But the reality is that psychology is a young science, and both parts of that phrase are important: young, and science. It is not literary deconstruction.
All these have a strong criticism of Chomsky woven through the book:
Foundations of Language, Ray Jackendoff
From Grammar to Science, Victor Yngve
Constructing Language: A Usage Based Theory of Language Acquisition, by Michael Tomasello
Those three will get you started, I have some for Logic and General Linguistics, and will post them when I have the time.
I recently got into a discussion about a high-level issue concerning UG. The case I make is circumstantial but is a counterbalance to all the propaganda about 'science' that Chomskians use to imply that other approaches are 'unscientific'.
As the Wikipedia article notes, there are still many theories regarding the origin of handedness. The book Right Hand, Left Hand addresses the evidence available for different hypotheses regarding this in some detail.
Some of the relevant and interesting facts about handedness that the book pointed out:
Not only that, but we may not have any control over it at all.
Apparently some research has shown that any conscious decisions, such as you deciding to write your comment or to read my comment, are done automatically by the brain and then decoded by your "interpereter", which makes sense of the situation (and past situations up to that point) and gives you a reason as to why you did that, making you think it was a conscious action.
For example, you decide you are hungry, so you reach out in front of you, pick up an apple and eat it. What actually happens is your brain, being in charge of everything, knows you are hungry so moves your arm to eat the apple. This information, your arm moving and the consumption of the apple, is sent through your interpreter to make sense of it. It knows you were hungry already and it knows that apples make you less hungry and it knows that your arm is used to pick things up when you eat them. It stitches this information together to make it seem like you are having the conscious thought to move your arm to eat the apple because you are hungry. So it feels like you are in charge of doing all of those things when really you were not!
What is even more amazing is that this sending and receiving of information takes some time to do, so there is a gap of a few milliseconds between the physical action occurring and your brain to finish interpreting it. This means that what you are perceiving at this very moment is actually what happened a few milliseconds ago!
Okay, okay sorry for all the words and the poor explanation. I just finished reading this book and I was eager to share some of the information I learned.
The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self. Thomas Metzinger.
Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Brain. Michael Gazzaniga (neuroscientist)
Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals, and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience. Gregg Caruso and Owen Flanagan, Eds. (Part 3: Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Meaning in Life has 6 essays by Derk Pereboom, Caruso, Gazzaniga, and others, and other essays scattered throughout the book are also pertinent)
Hi there,
Some suggestions for ya!
The Quest for Consciousness by Christof Koch. Minimal neuroscience background required, but the more you know, the more you'll derive from this book. Focused on illustrating how complex networks can manifest behaviour (and consciousness). Outside of Koch's regular pursuits as an electrophysiology, he worked alongside Francis Crick (ya that one), to study arousal and consciousness. It's a fantastic read, and it's quite humbling.
Rhythms of the Brain by Gyorgy Buzsaki. Written for neuroscientists and engineers as an introductory textbook into network dynamics, oscillations, and behaviour. One of my favorite books in the field, but it can also be the most challenging.
Treatise of Man by Rene Descarte. Personal favorite, simply because it highlights how far we've come (e.g. pineal gland, pain, and animal spirits).
Synaptic Self by Joseph LeDoux provides the fantastic realization that "you are your synapse". Great circuit/network book written with a lot of psychological and philosophical considerations.
Finally...
Physical control of the mind--towards of psychocivilized society by the one and only Jose Delgado. (In)Famous for his experiments where he stopped a bull charging at him through amygdala stimulation- along with some similar experiments in people- Delgado skirts the line between good intention and mad science. It's too bad he's not taught more in history of neuroscience.
Any book that take a scientific look on how we perceive and integrate stimulu. (Here is my choice).
Any Oliver Sacks book. Understanding the broken brain is a very good tool to get the healthy one.(start with this one)
There is that Crash Course Psychology.
For me it's a good to understand what are attention and perception, what is it to learn and the importance of working memory. You can get all that without understanding memory, but it would be interesting to.
It can be cool to have a general idea of when our brain use shortcut because it's important not to waste energy.
And then for the social side of it welcome to the field of influence.
For a bit of history, the declassified documents are on the source section.
Having an autistic brother as well, I was not really happy with the line Cole dropped. I know it was a meaningless punch line and he's not out to offend mentally handicapped people, but he didn't even get the line right. People with autism aren't even considered mentally retarded, it is a social disorder. While technically some kids with autism are considered "mentally retarded" they are smarter than you think, there is just a disconnect in communication. There is a good book written by a kid who has autism and was completely non-verbal when he was growing up. He explained how it annoyed him so much that people blatantly talked to him like he had the mind of a baby. It's a really good read.
Yeah, it's not a good blog. I think he's attempting to summarize this article, which is based on this new book.
This one: http://www.amazon.com/Holotropic-Mind-Three-Levels-Consciousness/dp/0062506595/ref=la_B000APUAY6_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393689395&sr=1-8
really blew my mind,
“Brian McLaughlin wrote the entry on consciousness for the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Consciousness. He said the Churchlands don’t believe in consciousness. And it was so interesting because we had studiously avoided saying any such thing about consciousness. So I phoned Brian after I read this and I said, ‘Well, what the fuck?’”
-Patricia Churchland
This. I did my MA work under the Churchlands and it never ceases to amaze me how many philosophers attribute to them a disbelief in consciousness. After attending their lectures, having informal conversations, and reading significant portions of their published work, I never found a single instance of them denying the existence of consciousness.
I found several where they affirmed it as a legitimate unexplained puzzle in neuroscience and one that they hoped to contribute to solving. Paul has argued in detail that consciousness may be implemented by a recurrent neural network which uses the reticular activating system, which has its hub in the thalamus and feedback connections to all parts of the cortex, and this looks to me like a more substantive suggestion than anything the folks who chide them for "not taking consciousness seriously" have offered.
And yet, nearly every time their names come up in a conversation, somebody is talking about them as the crazy people who deny consciousness. Maybe this encyclopedia entry is part of the reason.
The Reason I Jump is a pretty good light-reading primer on the how's and why's of a boy with autism. Plenty of eye-opening information, particularly about how he describes his behaviors and his cognitive process.
Ido in Autismland is another favorite of mine. More in-depth and slightly longer winded, it's a book rich in information, but definitely the one I'd read second.
The market is saturated with plenty of books on autism written by psycological or disabilities professionals, but if you really want to understand, I find there's no substitute for a book written by an autistic author.
Daniel Dennett discusses this idea in his book, "Kinds of Minds", if anyone is interested.
One name you should definitely be citing a lot is Michael Tomasello: link (from 2005, an overview of the indequacy of Chomskian approaches to language acquisition) and link (from 1995, a critical response to Steven Pinker's pop-Chomskian book "The Language Instinct") and link (from 2004, a brief note on the question of universal grammar's falsifiability), just for starters. Usage-based linguistics is the major counterweight to generative linguistics these days and Tomasello is at the forefront.
You might find some inspiration in this David Chalmers' interview. It's a success story of a math whiz who would, late in his education, switch to philosophy.
>It had always seemed my destiny to be a mathematician and for the most part I didn't question it. I've always loved computers and I suppose the obvious alternative was something in that area.... I did keep thinking about philosophical problems, though mostly for fun on the side rather than as a serious career possibility.
>
>...I had still hardly read any analytic philosophy. I had come across a few things in Hofstadter and Dennett's collection The Mind's I -- notably Dennett's "Where am I?", which I loved, Searle's "Minds, Brains, and Programs,” which was interesting and infuriating, and Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” which I found difficult to read but which must have had some influence. Later on that year I encountered Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons, which I loved and gave me a sense of how powerful analytic philosophy can be when done clearly and accessibly. I also read Pat Churchland's Neurophilosophy, which gave a nice overview of contemporary philosophy of mind as well as neuroscience, and provided a lot to disagree with.
>
>Around this point I thought that I needed a proper education in philosophy, and I started thinking seriously about switching programs...
You might consider advice from Eric Schwitzgebel regarding MA/PhD:
> Some, including very good, PhD programs will consider non-philosophy majors if they have strong undergraduate records and have background in areas related to philosophy, for example, math, linguistics or psychology. However, even if a PhD program is willing to consider such students, it is often difficult for them to evaluate the student’s philosophical abilities from their undergrad records, letters, etc.
>
>In general, I think it most advisable for students who fall into this first category to consider seriously the MA route.
I don't have a reference for you on this because I got it from an audiobook, and I don't feel like looking up details, but I've heard from a reputable source that recent double blinds seem to suggest that ECT isn't that much more effective than a placebo.
If you want more details, read: https://www.amazon.com/Suggestible-You-Curious-Science-Transform/dp/1426217897
The chapter on placebos.
The book itself is very interesting when it comes to depression, considering how much brain chemistry seems to be responsive to placebo/suggestion.
Highly recommended, fun, easy, and quick read.
Oversimplification. Please read "The religion virus", it's a small book, and pretty enlightening.
I can't recall where I originally heard that handedness influenced drawing, but here are some relevant sources that I found:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1418831
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16350613
Interestingly, the second link says that in children handedness did not influence the subjects like it did the adults.
> My hypothesis is not that children (and people in general) see a letter and then spend time flipping it back and forth in the x-z plane, but rather that the mind encodes the memory of the object/symbol in a non-specific orientation in the x-z plane, so when it is recalled, there is a chance that it is seen from "the other side".
This definitely makes sense, and perhaps it is the case for some people? I know that for me, the symbol is encoded in a non-specific orientation, but not in a specific plane. I think that the part of my brain that does symbol processing bypasses my spatial perception - so it essentially all 2D. From a certain viewpoint I might see a pattern in a wall that looks like a face or a letter, but when I change my perspective it disappears.
I do know that symbol processing takes place in different parts of the brain depending on the language the person knows. Chinese speakers process characters differently than people who learned a language with an alphabet. (I know this from the book Proust and the Squid which is fascinating.) So, my thought is there are many factors that might be influencing these mirroring errors, but your theory is definitely a contender.
If construction grammar is interesting, you might try looking into exemplar theory too. Most of what I'm familiar with in the framework is morphophonology, but there's some stuff on syntax too.
Also, you might be interested in Michael Tomasello's book on language acquisition, for a different perspective from what you got in your class.
A good book assessing the pros and cons of evolutionary psychology is: From Mating to Mentality: Evaluating Evolutionary Psychology. In particular, the final chapter: Evolutionary Psychology and the Challenge of Adaptive Explanation.
On the topics of "Cartesian reasoning, separation of organism/environment", you might like these books:
Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience
Beyond the Brain: How Body and Environment Shape Animal and Human Minds
And for "the problems of the "science industry"" you might enjoy this book:
Is Water H2O?: Evidence, Realism and Pluralism
Great book! I keep extra copies to give away. I'd also suggest a similar book (and cover) The Holotropic Mind, by Grof
The Holotropic Mind
http://www.amazon.com/The-Holotropic-Mind-Levels-Consciousness/dp/0062506595
https://www.federaljack.com/ebooks/Consciousness%20Books%20Collection/Paul%20Churchland%20-%20Engine%20of%20Reason%20-%20Seat%20of%20Soul.pdf
Anyway, it's available on google by searching for "engine of reason"+"seat of the soul"+pdf.
I'm not praising piracy, by the way, a girl stole my hard copy many years ago and I remember that it was available for free on MIT resources.
Nonetheless, it's cheap enough and I really suggest the hard-copy.It's worth every penny!
https://www.amazon.com/Engine-Reason-Seat-Soul-Philosophical/dp/B005DIAZCW
The sample size was very small (83 participants), but the test was also in a very different format than this. This was a big reason I wanted to conduct my own version, even if it was not as formal.
I recommend you check out the links on the research page: http://chartsme.com/disgust-politics/. It includes the actual study and a really interesting TED talk which discusses the idea in more detail and also shows some of the images used.
If you're really interested in the biology of political ideology, a good book to read is: http://www.amazon.com/Predisposed-Liberals-Conservatives-Political-Differences/dp/0415535875
Another thing to consider: your impulsive vs. deciding mind may not always be in agreement. I also used to belong to another party, but I changed parties because I ultimately decided while some of the ideas didn't "feel right", I came to the rational decision that they best served society.
Our ability to override our impulses and subconscious is what makes us uniquely human.
Sometimes parties accuse each other on making decisions based on feelings (being weak) vs pure rational (being heartless). The thing is, a decision is nearly impossible to make without feelings. Feelings are a critical component of decision making. Without emotion you have no vested interested in the outcome and weighing the possibilities becomes an enormous task especially when there is no common criteria in which to weigh the decisions. Emotions simplify this. On the other hand, using too much emotion in decision making can prove disastrous.
21, liberal/Social Democrat.
Also, for anyone interested, I'm currently in the middle of an incredible book titled Predisposed: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences which has really started to open my eyes to why people lean one way or the other.
I would recommend this book to any INTP, or anyone even minutely interested in politics, psychology, or societal affairs.
There are lots of variants of the identity theory, but let try to articulate one version. It's the sort of account that Paul Churchland gives in The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul (which I strongly reccomend!).
Here's an optical illusion. If you look at the inverted flag for 30 seconds, when the screen then goes blank, you'll see the red stripes of the American flag. Of course, there aren’t really any red stripes that you see. What I mean when I say "you'll see red stripes" is that you'll have a certain experience that you might characterize by using those words. There is a certain phenomenal character, a certain "what-it's-likeness", to that experience. That character is what we might call "experiencing redly." The identity theorist says that experiencing redly is identical to undergoing a certain neurophysiological process.
To explain why one might think this, you have to think about what's going on in your brain when you look at that optical illusion. When you look at the green stripes of the pre-image, the green and blue cones in your eyes are doing a lot of work. When the image turns off, these cones are fatigued, and so the red cones are more active relative to these ones. The relative activation of these cones sends a signal to your visual cortex where these activation levels are represented in a vector-space in your brain. There are vector spaces corresponding to each of your sensory modalities. The one corresponding to color vision we might call "color space."
Now, your brain also has self-monitoring capacities by which it is able to represent its own activity and integrate it into a higher-order representation. The higher-order representation of the activity in a certain region in the color space is what we called "experiencing redly." On such an account, both the first-order and the second-order representation are cashed out in purely neurophysiological terms. Accordingly, qualia are complex neurophysiological processes.
Of course, there remain many questions to be asked about such an account, but I don't see any obviously insurmountable philosophical problems with an account that thinks about qualia along these lines.
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Edit: Just a note to the person who responded (the comment seems to have been deleted):
Lots of philosophers of mind are internalists about phenomenal qualities like color. So they'd reject the claim that colors exist in the world. Adam Pautz, for instance, defends phenomenal internalism on empirical grounds. One of the main arguments he gives is what he calls "the argument from structure." The basic idea is this:
Colors bear certain structural relationships to each other, and that’s essential to their being the colors that they are. It’s essential to something’s being violet for instance, that it is closer to red than it is to green. Thinking of colors in terms of the brain's vector-representation of quality spaces preserves this structure. However, if you think of colors as physical properties of things in the world (such as the reflectance properties of objects), this structure is not preserved. Consider that the wavelengths of light corresponding to violet are around 400nm, and those corresponding to the color green are around 550nm, whereas those corresponding to red are around 700nm. Accordingly, if we wish to identify colors with some physical property, there is more reason to identify them with internal states than external ones.
If you have a familiarity with neuroscience, I suggest The Quest for Consciousness as well, written by one of the cognitive neuroscientists mentioned in the article.
I entered Neuroscience not really knowing much about programming and now some 8+ odd years later I have two companies willing to pay me six figures for software I've written (mostly est. off royalties but 5 figs. up front). So I've gone through pretty much every stage of expertise there is. For most people, Matlab is sufficient and this book exists which I haven't personally used but looks great. Python may or may not be a great investment. Matlab dominates systems neuroscience so if you go into a 'Matlab lab' that's all you'll use and while it will be nice to have some Python expertise you won't actually use it. On the other hand, there is a movement to use non-Matlab software (more so in Europe) and the stuff in Python is really good. There is a big Python community and a lot of people just like it (and have come to dislike Matlab).
But want to get serious? Learn C and C++. There is simply no substitute for these if you want to write fast, standalone applications. In addition there's enough code, usually in critical applications tied to hardware, written in either of these that it is very good to know in case you have to go in and look/fix. So for the second reason my recommendation would be to learn C.
I really like this book so far!
https://www.amazon.com/POTS-Together-Stand-Riding-Dysautonomia/dp/1466371501
Proust and the squid
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0060186399/ref=aw_d_detail?pd=1
Sorry to rain on the parade: While scientific sources, you're positing absolutes here and drawing false dichotomies in correlating what are essentially "before and after" pictures.
I would encourage you to give this book a look Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience - and the video-lecture-talks by the author Scott O. Lilienfeld.
Secondly, you do also realize that psychotherapy has been noted as a form of neurosurgery as well? - it's because of the neuroplasticity of the brain, and its remarkable ability to change. However of course, with a disclaimer, it may be a bit too convoluted to realize for BPD, but obviously many have noted that DBT has improved their symptoms - as you say your own symptoms have improved with therapy.
By my reference and your self-ancedotal notions, it should be fair to say that the neuroplasticity within the brain inherently allocates for change. However, whether it may be the change you would like, it may be too contrived due to the fact that we're dealing with your subjective self-experiences - and that psychotherapy is as much as it can be conducive to neuroplastic change is not an absolute solution as well, because of how subjective the psychotheraputic process can be.
But obviously, like yeah, talking to people and being aware of your symptoms, whilst mitigating the pent-up emotions with a psychotherapist is conductive for actual change - as well as neuroplastic change that goes hand-in-hand with it. Also, a therapist can promote and patronize subjective bias within the therapeutic process as well, despite however well-meaning he/she may be.
I don't think the subjective self (what I think you are calling "mind" here) is something separate from the physical brain (standard Cartesian Duality), but rather, is a property of it.
Couple of books I can recommend:
https://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Mind-Search-Fundamental-Philosophy/dp/0195117891
https://www.amazon.com/Neurophilosophy-Toward-Unified-Science-Mind-Brain/dp/0262530856
For a cognitive/neuroscientific/psychosocial perspective on this subject, I highly recommend the work of Lise Eliot and Cordelia Fine. Eliot is a professor of neuroscience and Fine is an academic psychologist, and they have together done an excellent job of demolishing junk neuroscience studies that were conducted with the intent of proving that men and women are intrinsically different, all the while linking these studies back to a long history of scientific/medical sexism and cultural "just-so stories" of why women are inherently inferior to men.
If you're interested in further reading on junk neuroscience (and how it is prejudicially applied to socially marginalized groups), I'd recommend Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience by Satel and Lillienfeld. Or watch this lecture by Dr. Dorothy Bishop on common flaws in bad neuroscience.
>It just seems like religious thinking more than anything.
Ah, I see what you're saying, and yes I agree with you in that respect.
I certainly think it's worthwhile to study cognitive processes, but modern Neuroscientists searching for "Consciousness" seems a bit like Astronomers searching for "Heaven."
As for research, here's a book on the subject.
Also, I loved Solaris.
Is that your blog and this your book?
Looks interesting, I might ask my mum for that for Christmas.
The book was Kinds of Minds by Daniel Dennett. It is not excessively long, and is really good food for thought.
Yes, I agree the computational model is a drastic oversimplification that filters out all types of emergent possibilities.
My own sense, based on reading such as the above and life experience, is that my "observer" or "experiencer", if you will, the observing self that is farthest removed from the physical (or at least hardest so far to identify in the physical brain) and from the brain's cognitive model of experience, is very much at the whim of the physical brain, i.e. dependent on the physical brain functioning as perfectly as possible, to get its information, for the experience it observes. Further, it actually has little recourse to actively intervene in the observed situation without usually some kind of cognitive training (such as meditation), and more typically, some other, lower processes which are more readily measured, are doing the actual decision making. For instance, the "observer" does not operate the voice in your head, rather it observes it. In other words, I am in the middle regarding the debate as to whether awareness of intent isn't just made up after the lower brain reacts automatically to stimuli. I think that happens, but it can be overridden with effort.
Thus rather than saying that the brain doesn't know the difference, it is actually the observer which can have a very hard time telling the difference without all sorts of cognitive tools (mental processes) providing qualifiers to observed phenomena identifying their provenance. The observer is, in other words, easy to fool.
So what is the observer anyway? My guess is that we won't be able to answer that until we are able to manufacture self awareness in order to prove whatever theory we come up with.
Edit: and the brain's cognitive... -> and from the brain's cognitive...
Edit 2: this book
I just finished reading "Ido in Autismland," a book written by a non-verbal autistic teenager.
His insights into what it is like to be autistic and the way well meaning people treat autistic kids are invaluable and should be required reading for anyone working with autistic kids.
Then you should read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Right-Hand-Left-Asymmetry-Cultures/dp/0674016130
If you are looking for something written for a popular/lay audience, a few good starting points:
Making up the Mind by Chris Frith:
http://www.amazon.com/Making-Mind-Brain-Creates-Mental/dp/1405160225
Older but particularly relevant for emotion and consciousness- "Descartes error"
http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X
If you want something from a less mainstream perspective dealing with embodiment and consciousness, you may enjoy Brainstorms by Shaun Gallagher:
http://www.amazon.com/Brainstorming-Views-Interviews-Shaun-Gallagher/dp/1845400232
Hope these help!
This is the one I was thinking of starting with. Open to suggestions on which Dennett book to read either alongside Churchland or immediately after.
> “Do YOU take the effort to try and understand the reasons why people disagree with you and regularly use critical thinking to refine your own opinions, even entertaining ideas you strongly disagree on in your gut in order to evaluate if part of them connects to your existing knowledge?”
I’m fairly confident I do a better job of that than most average people (not saying I’m perfect at it, and its some I try to keep in my mind on a daily basis and something I try to practice in a daily basis).
I have an entire bookshelf at home that has all sorts of “brain” and psychology books on it (again, not saying that to brag, because I’m definitely not perfect at it). I just try to build up a wide enough variety of resources so any time I’m struggling with something I can use the resources I have to brainstorm innovative or alternative approaches or different understandings of an issue.
Books like:
(theres alot more but to be honest I’m already in bed and its been a long day and I’m to lazy to get up and skim across my bookshelf).
> “Listening to people we disagree with is HARD. “
Its not hard if the person is respectful and can back up their different opinion or preference with good legit factual evidence and common sense reasoning. Its one thing to say:
Thats a completely logical and purpose-driven choice that makes sense.
But if a person says:...
I’m not going to waste my time “trying to understand” that persons point of view. Sorry, I’m just not. Its not worth my time.
> “ something as trivial as if you prefer dogs or cats or neither.”
I generaly try to completely avoid those conversations. People can have different preferences. That typically doesnt effect me. So I dont care. Whether someone prefers chocolate ice cream or sunny days over rainy days,.. is entirely irrelevant to me.
> “Maybe it's just plain time to retire the idea of "us vs them" and recognize that there's just "us" in a wide range of configurations.”
Totally agree. Although I’m not sure thats an issue of “not understanding each other”. Thats certainly 1 aspect of it,.. but I can help other people without understanding them. (Hell, I can help complete strangers without even knowing a single thing about them).
Societies problems these days have a lot more to do with narrowmindedness, selfishness and laziness. “Whats in it for me?” is heard a lot more often than “What can I do to help?”
Read the FAQ on the sidebar to answer all of your questions.
It's a central, scientific understanding of the ketogenic lifestyle that sugar is a harmful and addictive substance. Whether you consciously know it or not, you (and everyone else considering keto) want and need carbs. Dozens of people every week, like any other addict looking to indulge their addiction, come here eagerly looking to CKD as a magic fitness solution that still lets them get their fix.
We exercise tough love here. Suck it up.
Check out matlab for neuroscientists you can probably skip the first couple of chapters as they deal with the very basics. The later chapters get into more specific subjects, designing experiments, and analysis techniques. They even provide datasets online for you to play with. I hope that helps!
Hi!
I was diagnosed with POTS a year ago, so I know how scary this is. I urge you to get this book! It has a ton of tips! POTS - Together We Stand: Riding the Waves of Dysautonomia by Jodi Epstein Rhum.
If you purchase the book from Amazon ($24.99), please be sure to login at smile.amazon.com and choose Dysautonomia International as the charity of your choice. Amazon will donate a percentage to DI!
Hope this helps. :)
> theres no disputing the matter.. they may choose not to react in a way that is out of alignment with there selves, but there will still be some level of objectivity, correct?
I tried to include that this was my question.. I understand that concept, my question was whether or not It was a literal interpretation or not.
Currently I am reading Conciousness and the Social brain)
Another good consciousness book is Christof Koch's The Quest for Consciousness. My dissertation was somewhat about consciousness, so this really helped inform my arguments.
There's an interesting pop-science book called Suggestible You by Erik Vance, which talks at length about the recorded powers of the placebo effect, the problem with trying to test drugs without relying on it, and of course its evil cousin, the nocebo effect, which is the sort of thing that makes people sick because they heard windmills are bad.
Chapter 25 of this book goes into this subject.
Strangely it's the only chapter lacking citations IIRC.
This article is quite short. For more details see a lengthier Aeon Article, a 2011 publication in Cognitive Neuroscience: Human consciousness and its relationship to social neuroscience: A novel hypothesis
and a book on Amazon Consciousness and the Social Brain.
I don't have a lot of time but you will find more info about agency with:
There is a lot more in the bibliography if you want to dig in it. Overall, neuroscience show that virtually all human cognitive features can be decomposed. Crazy at first when we learn about clinical neuropsychology but so interesting!
I recommend that anyone interested in this subject also read Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine. PDF copy.
it is weird, but the mind is incredibly weird. I would try to be optimistic about your situation, in that, if you sort of got yourself into this at least partially because of psychological factors, you may well get yourself out.
I have a couple friends who don't have significant T, but can hear it in very quiet rooms, and have told me that when they focus on it, it becomes "deafening".
I am presently reading and really enjoying this book, and you might, as well: https://www.amazon.com/Suggestible-You-Curious-Science-Transform/dp/1426217897
There's a good summary of the research on this in the book "Predisposed": http://www.amazon.com/Predisposed-Liberals-Conservatives-Political-Differences/dp/0415535875
It covers the consequences of both too much inbreeding and too much outbreeding, and the inherited biases towards one or the other. The Hapsburg's are talked about a good bit. Non-human breeding is looked at for comparison. It's a pretty good description of the whole topic. Probably not for a five-year old, though.
> there are brain circuits which evolved to support other functions
This was one of the central points of Proust and the Squid, by Maryanne Wolf. The book was a little more technical than most books written for an audience of non-specialists, but it was overall very good. The part at the end about dyslexia was especially intriguing.
A good book to look into http://www.amazon.com/Right-Hand-Left-Asymmetry-Cultures/dp/0674016130. It claims a person's handedness is a combination of nature and nurture. In the past, left handedness was connotated with abnormality and unusualness, thus we are more in a right handed society than left. Since the left hand is controlled by the right hemisphere, I'd speculate that the part of the brain is more active. Left handedness has been associated with creativity, musicality and visual and spatial sense...so studies and the book make claim to some positive correlation between the two, though I don't recall of any strong evidence other than noting very notable creative left handed people.