Author: William ElderPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Memory
Languages : en
Pages : 36
Book Description
The Physical Basis of Memory ...
Author: William ElderDiscovering the Brain
Author: National Academy of SciencesPublisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309045290
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 195
Book Description
The brain ... There is no other part of the human anatomy that is so intriguing. How does it develop and function and why does it sometimes, tragically, degenerate? The answers are complex. In Discovering the Brain, science writer Sandra Ackerman cuts through the complexity to bring this vital topic to the public. The 1990s were declared the "Decade of the Brain" by former President Bush, and the neuroscience community responded with a host of new investigations and conferences. Discovering the Brain is based on the Institute of Medicine conference, Decade of the Brain: Frontiers in Neuroscience and Brain Research. Discovering the Brain is a "field guide" to the brainâ€"an easy-to-read discussion of the brain's physical structure and where functions such as language and music appreciation lie. Ackerman examines: How electrical and chemical signals are conveyed in the brain. The mechanisms by which we see, hear, think, and pay attentionâ€"and how a "gut feeling" actually originates in the brain. Learning and memory retention, including parallels to computer memory and what they might tell us about our own mental capacity. Development of the brain throughout the life span, with a look at the aging brain. Ackerman provides an enlightening chapter on the connection between the brain's physical condition and various mental disorders and notes what progress can realistically be made toward the prevention and treatment of stroke and other ailments. Finally, she explores the potential for major advances during the "Decade of the Brain," with a look at medical imaging techniquesâ€"what various technologies can and cannot tell usâ€"and how the public and private sectors can contribute to continued advances in neuroscience. This highly readable volume will provide the public and policymakersâ€"and many scientists as wellâ€"with a helpful guide to understanding the many discoveries that are sure to be announced throughout the "Decade of the Brain."
Mechanisms of Memory
Author: J. David SweattPublisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0080959199
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 362
Book Description
This fully revised second edition provides the only unified synthesis of available information concerning the mechanisms of higher-order memory formation. It spans the range from learning theory, to human and animal behavioral learning models, to cellular physiology and biochemistry. It is unique in its incorporation of chapters on memory disorders, tying in these clinically important syndromes with the basic science of synaptic plasticity and memory mechanisms. It also covers cutting-edge approaches such as the use of genetically engineered animals in studies of memory and memory diseases. Written in an engaging and easily readable style and extensively illustrated with many new, full-color figures to help explain key concepts, this book demystifies the complexities of memory and deepens the reader's understanding. - More than 25% new content, particularly expanding the scope to include new findings in translational research. - Unique in its depth of coverage of molecular and cellular mechanisms - Extensive cross-referencing to Comprehensive Learning and Memory - Discusses clinically relevant memory disorders in the context of modern molecular research and includes numerous practical examples
The Physical basis of mind
Author: George Henry LewesThe Physical Basis of Mental Illness
Author: Ronald ChasePublisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412847850
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171
Book Description
This accessible volume sets an ambitious goal: to help people better understand the nature of mental illness. The term itself is a problem for most who believe, consciously or not, that individuals have both a mind and a body. Ronald Chase is interested in the roots of this thinking about mental illness, and finds it in philosophical dualism, famously promoted by René Descartes in the seventeenth century. Chase believes this perspective contributes to the stigma associated with mental illness, and argues for a different conceptual understanding. He describes and evaluates several alternatives, including behaviorism, physicalism, and functionalism. He also explores whether mental states can be reduced to brain states, and whether mental events cause things to happen. His provocative answers suggest mind-body dualism is outdated and misleading, and some version of physicalism is more likely to help us understand mental illness. Chase presents a concise outline of the science of mental illness, with a focus on schizophrenia, noting that faulty brain development is the fundamental cause of major mental illness. Using detailed, but non-technical language, Chase describes how genes combine with environmental influences to produce changes in brain structures and functions. Chase insists on the need to understand mental illness as a biological phenomenon, yet accepts that people use mental terms and concepts in everyday discourse. This scientifically sound challenge to major assumptions currently in vogue with respect to mental illness will initiate a new dialogue on the subject. It will be important to academics, psychiatric professionals, and those affected by mental illness—victims, family members, and caregivers.
The Physical Basis of Thermodynamics
Author: Pascal RichetPublisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780306465840
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 488
Book Description
Given that thermodynamics books are not a rarity on the market, why would an additional one be useful? The answer is simple: at any level, thermodynamics is usually taught as a somewhat abstruse discipline where many students get lost in a maze of difficult concepts. However, thermodynamics is not as intricate a subject as most people feel. This book fills a niche between elementary textbooks and mathematically oriented treatises, and provides readers with a distinct approach to the subject. As indicated by the title, this book explains thermodynamic phenomena and concepts in physical terms before proceeding to focus on the requisite mathematical aspects. It focuses on the effects of pressure, temperature and chemical composition on thermodynamic properties and places emphasis on rapidly evolving fields such as amorphous materials, metastable phases, numerical simulations of microsystems and high-pressure thermodynamics. Topics like redox reactions are dealt with in less depth, due to the fact that there is already much literature available. Without requiring a background in quantum mechanics, this book also illustrates the main practical applications of statistical thermodynamics and gives a microscopic interpretation of temperature, pressure and entropy. This book is perfect for undergraduate and graduate students who already have a basic knowledge of thermodynamics and who wish to truly understand the subject and put it in a broader physical perspective. The book is aimed not at theoretical physicists, but rather at practitioners with a variety of backgrounds from physics to biochemistry for whom thermodynamics is a tool which would be better used if better understood.
THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF MIND
Author: GEORGE HENRY LEWESPublisher: BEYOND BOOKS HUB
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 516
Book Description
THE title indicates that this volume is restricted to the group of material conditions which constitute the organism in relation to the physical world—a group which furnishes the data for one half of the psychologist’s quest; the other half being furnished by historical and social conditions. The Human Mind, so far as it is accessible to scientific inquiry, has a twofold root, man being not only an animal organism but an unit in the social organism; and hence the complete theory of its functions and faculties must be sought in this twofold direction. This conception (which has been declared “to amount to a revolution in Psychology”), although slowly prepared by the growing conviction that Man could not be isolated from Humanity, was first expounded in the opening volume of these Problems of Life and Mind; at least, I am not aware that any predecessor had seen how the specially human faculties of Intellect and Conscience were products of social factors co-operating with the animal factors. In considering the Physical Basis a large place must be assigned to the mechanical and chemical relations which are involved in organic functions; yet we have to recognize that this procedure of Analysis is artificial and preparatory, that none of its results are final, none represent the synthetic reality of vital facts. Hence one leading object of the following pages has been everywhere to substitute the biological point of view for the metaphysical and mechanical points of view which too often obstruct research—the one finding its expression in spiritualist theories, the other in materialist theories; both disregarding the plain principle that the first requisite in a theory of biological phenomena must be to view them in the light of biological conditions: in other words, to fix our gaze upon what passes in the organism, and not on what may pass in the laboratory, where the conditions are different. Analysis is a potent instrument, but is too often relied on in forgetfulness of what constitutes its real aid, and thus leads to a disregard of all those conditions which it has artificially set aside. We see this in the tendency of anatomists and physiologists to assign to one element, in a complex cluster of co-operants, the significance which properly belongs to that cluster: as when the property of a tissue is placed exclusively in a single element of that tissue, the function of an organ assigned to its chief tissue, and a function of the organism to a single organ. Another object has been to furnish the reader uninstructed in physiology with such a general outline of the structure and functions of the organism, and such details respecting the sentient mechanism, as may awaken an interest in the study, and enable him to understand the application of Physiology to Psychology. If he comes upon details which can only interest specially educated students, or perhaps only by them be really understood, he can pass over these details, for their omission will not seriously affect the bearing of the general principles. I have given the best I had to give; and must leave each reader to find in it whatever may interest him. The uses of books are first to stimulate inquiry by awakening an interest; secondly, to clarify and classify the knowledge already gained from direct contemplation of the phenomena. They are stimuli and aids to observation and thought. They should never be allowed to see for us, nor to think for us. The volume contains four essays. The first, on the Nature of Life, deals with the speciality of organic phenomena, as distinguished from the inorganic. It sets forth the physiological principles which Psychology must incessantly invoke. In the course of the exposition I have incorporated several passages from four articles on Mr. Darwin’s hypotheses, contributed to the Fortnightly Review during the year 1868. I have also suggested a modification of the hypothesis of Natural Selection, by extending to the tissues and organs that principle of competition which Mr. Darwin has so luminously applied to organisms. Should this generalization of the “struggle for existence” be accepted, it will answer many of the hitherto unanswerable objections. The second essay is on the Nervous Mechanism, setting forth what is known and what is inferred respecting the structure and properties of that all-important system. If the sceptical and revolutionary attitude, in presence of opinions currently held to be established truths, surprises or pains the reader unprepared for such doubts, I can only ask him to submit my statements to a similar scepticism, and confront them with the ascertained evidence. After many years of laborious investigation and meditation, the conclusion has slowly forced itself upon me, that on this subject there is a “false persuasion of knowledge” very fatal in its influence, because unhesitatingly adopted as the ground of speculation both in Pathology and Psychology. This persuasion is sustained because few are aware how much of what passes for observation is in reality sheer hypothesis. I have had to point out the great extent to which Imaginary Anatomy has been unsuspectingly accepted; and hope to have done something towards raising a rational misgiving in the student’s mind respecting “the superstition of the nerve-cell”—a superstition which I freely confess to have shared in for many years. The third essay treats of Animal Automatism. Here the constant insistance on the biological point of view, while it causes a rejection of the mechanical theory, admits the fullest recognition of all the mechanical relations involved in animal movements, and thus endeavors to reconcile the contending schools. In this essay I have also attempted a psychological solution of that much-debated question—the relation between Body and Mind. This solution explains why physical and mental phenomena must necessarily present to our apprehension such profoundly diverse characters; and shows that Materialism, in attempting to deduce the mental from the physical, puts into the conclusion what the very terms have excluded from the premises; whereas, on the hypothesis of a physical process being only the objective aspect of a mental process, the attempt to interpret the one by the other is as legitimate as the solution of a geometrical problem by algebra. In the final essay the Reflex Theory is discussed; and here once more the biological point of view rectifies the error of an analysis which has led to the denial of Sensibility in reflex actions, because that analysis has overlooked the necessary presence of the conditions which determine Sensibility. In these chapters are reproduced several passages from the Physiology of Common Life. According to my original intention, this volume was to have included an exposition of the part I conceive the brain to play in physiological and psychological processes, but that must be postponed until it can be accompanied by a survey of psychological processes which would render the exposition more intelligible.
Conn's Translational Neuroscience
Author: P. Michael ConnPublisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128025964
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 778
Book Description
Conn's Translational Neuroscience provides a comprehensive overview reflecting the depth and breadth of the field of translational neuroscience, with input from a distinguished panel of basic and clinical investigators. Progress has continued in understanding the brain at the molecular, anatomic, and physiological levels in the years following the 'Decade of the Brain,' with the results providing insight into the underlying basis of many neurological disease processes. This book alternates scientific and clinical chapters that explain the basic science underlying neurological processes and then relates that science to the understanding of neurological disorders and their treatment. Chapters cover disorders of the spinal cord, neuronal migration, the autonomic nervous system, the limbic system, ocular motility, and the basal ganglia, as well as demyelinating disorders, stroke, dementia and abnormalities of cognition, congenital chromosomal and genetic abnormalities, Parkinson's disease, nerve trauma, peripheral neuropathy, aphasias, sleep disorders, and myasthenia gravis. In addition to concise summaries of the most recent biochemical, physiological, anatomical, and behavioral advances, the chapters summarize current findings on neuronal gene expression and protein synthesis at the molecular level. Authoritative and comprehensive, Conn's Translational Neuroscience provides a fully up-to-date and readily accessible guide to brain functions at the cellular and molecular level, as well as a clear demonstration of their emerging diagnostic and therapeutic importance. - Provides a fully up-to-date and readily accessible guide to brain functions at the cellular and molecular level, while also clearly demonstrating their emerging diagnostic and therapeutic importance - Features contributions from leading global basic and clinical investigators in the field - Provides a great resource for researchers and practitioners interested in the basic science underlying neurological processes - Relates and translates the current science to the understanding of neurological disorders and their treatment
The Physical Basis of Mind and Morals
Author: Michael Hendrick FitchPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 440
Book Description
The Physical Basis of The Direction of Time
Author: H. Dieter ZehPublisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540680012
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239
Book Description
This thoroughly revised 5th edition of Zeh's classic text investigates irreversible phenomena and their foundation in classical, quantum and cosmological settings. It includes new sections on the meaning of probabilities in a cosmological context, irreversible aspects of quantum computers, and various consequences of the expansion of the Universe. In particular, the book offers an analysis of the physical concept of time.