Consciousness and Cognition

Description

What were the circumstances that led to the development of our cognitive abilities from a primitive hominid to an essentially modern human? The answer to this question is of profound importance to understanding our present nature. Since the steep path of our cognitive development is the attribute that most distinguishes humans from other mammals, this is also a quest to determine human origins. This collection of outstanding scientific problems and the revelation of the many ways they can be addressed indicates the scope of the field to be explored and reveals some avenues along which research is advancing. Distinguished scientists and researchers who have advanced the discussion of the mind and brain contribute state-of-the-art presentations of their field of expertise. Chapters offer speculative and provocative views on topics such as body, culture, evolution, feelings, genetics, history, humor, knowledge, language, machines, neuroanatomy, pathology, and perception. This book will appeal to researchers and students in cognitive neuroscience, experimental psychology, cognitive science, and philosophy.

* Includes a contribution by Noam Chomsky, one of the most cited authors of our time

Front Cover 2
Consciousness and Cognition 5
Copyright Page 6
Contents 7
Contributors 10
Introduction 28
Chapter 1. How Did Modern Human Cognition Evolve? 31
- Our large brain: does size matter? 33
- Tools, decoration and art 35
- Where did modern human consciousness come from? 40
- Conclusion 45
Chapter 2. Taking Up Arms 47
- Thinking big 47
- The question of language 48
- Language is a hand-me-down! 49

Front Cover 2
Consciousness and Cognition 5
Copyright Page 6
Contents 7
Contributors 10
Introduction 28
Chapter 1. How Did Modern Human Cognition Evolve? 31
- Our large brain: does size matter? 33
- Tools, decoration and art 35
- Where did modern human consciousness come from? 40
- Conclusion 45
Chapter 2. Taking Up Arms 47
- Thinking big 47
- The question of language 48
- Language is a hand-me-down! 49
- Convincing myself 49
- Book for sale 50
- Objections 50
- When did autonomous speech emerge? 51
- Not with a bang, but with a whimper 54
Chapter 3. Celebrating 300 Million Years of the Mind: A Bird’s Eye View 57
- What do we mean by ‘the mind’? 58
- Flying without frontal lobes 59
- What is intelligence, and how can this be measured in birds? 59
- Birds, like humans, learn from careful observation 61
- How is this possible with so little neocortical tissue? 62
- From stories to controlled experiments 63
- Talking with Alex 66
- Bird play 67
- If my bird looks happy, is she really happy? 68
- Anthropomorphism 69
- Conclusion 70
Chapter 4. Was Medieval Cell Doctrine More Modern Than We Thought? 73
- A brief historical sketch – the standard view 73
- New version – it was in the brain all along 74
- Early studies of patients with brain damage 75
- Information flow – making the model dynamic 76
- A little Latin to help sort out the puzzle 76
- The brain’s control of movement 78
- A summary and outline 79
Chapter 5. Can Evolution Produce Robots? 81
- Artificial intelligence 81
- How does artificial evolution work? 84
- How artificial neurons work 86
- How to get robots to behave 86
- What artificial neural nets can do 87
- A useful application: getting rid of trash 89
- Learning and evolution 89
- What is the current state of things? 90
- Of what importance is evolutionary robotics? 92
- Future visions 92
Chapter 6. The Thought-Translation Device 97
- Using brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to translate thoughts into action 98
- Communicating with slow cortical potentials 99
- The origin of slow cortical potentials in the human brain 100
- The TTD in a nutshell 100
- Setting up and using the TTD 102
- How the language support program works 102
- The training procedure 104
- The training of patient E.M. 105
- TTD – visions for the future 108
Chapter 7. Babes in Arms: Studies in Laterality 111
- The left side rules 111
- A bias rediscovered 113
- Is the bias just a matter of handedness? 116
- Some things to know about handedness 117
- What handedness could explain about the holding-side bias 118
- Problems for a handedness explanation 119
- Is the bias a matter of posture? 121
- What’s the difference between babies and books? 123
- Types of holds and their functions 125
- States of ‘action-approach’ 125
- The anatomy of emotion 129
- Emotions, attention, and side of holding 130
- Can the attention hypothesis account for other details of the holding-side bias? 131
- An exception to the left-side rule 133
- Why don’t left-hand prohibitions decrease left-side holding? 135
- In Sum 136
Chapter 8. Why a Creative Brain? Evolutionary Setups for Off-Line Planning of Coherent Stages 143
- Creativity is an evolutionary newcomer 143
- Creativity for language instead? 144
- When an advance plan is needed 145
- Innovation during get-set 146
- The Darwinian process 147
- Speeding up the Darwinian process 148
- New uses for old things 149
- Long sentences and coherence 150
- Creating new levels of organization 151
Chapter 9. Creativity: Method or Magic? 155
- What is not creative? 156
- Underlying mechanisms 159
- Creative trait or creative state? 159
- Conclusions 165
Chapter 10. The Cross-Cultural Brain 167
- Alexithymia 168
- A ‘flashy’ way to do experiments 169
- The laterality hypothesis of alexithymia 169
- The experiments 171
- An invitation to participate in our online experiments 174
Chapter 11. Where’s the Missing Body? A Puzzle for Cognitive Science 177
- Act I 177
- Act II 179
- Act III 181
- Act IV 185
Chapter 12. Whose Free Will is it Anyway? or, The Illusion of Determinism 191
- Is free will more than a feeling? 191
- Neuroscience, neural reductionism and determinism 192
- The implications of reductionism and determinism for society and psychology 193
- Psychology and materialism of the mind 194
- Modern neuroscience and non-determinism: radical changes of the late twentieth century 195
- The crux of the free-will debate: is brain activity predictable? 196
- Future perspectives 198
Chapter 13. Affective Neuroscience and the Ancestral Sources of Human Feelings 201
- Some personal lessons and LESSNS about the evolved nature of emotions 201
- Archaeology of mind: the affective sources of consciousness 203
- Five distinctions between affective consciousness and cognitive consciousness 205
- The emotional underpinnings of human nature – toward a neuroevolutionary psychobiology 207
- Learning in emotional systems and more on the pervasive emotion-cognition interactions 210
- Development of new psychiatric medications 211
- Mind views: emotional states and cognitive information processing 212
- In sum 213
Chapter 14. The Funny Meat Behind Our Eyes 219
- Humor and laughter for fun and (maybe) health 221
- Humor and laughter from a biological perspective 222
- The functional cognitive anatomy of a joke 228
- Where do we go from here? 230
Chapter 15. Practicing Safe Stress: A Selective Overview of the Neuroscience Research 233
- Stress and stressors 233
- Acute stress and memory 238
- Chronic stress, brain structure, and function 241
- Stress and mental health 243
- How stress sculpts the developing brain 246
- Gender, stress, and the brain 248
- Coping with stress 249
Chapter 16. Petrol Sniffing, the Brain, and Aboriginal culture: Between Sorcery and Neuroscience 253
- Petrol sniffing 253
- Aboriginal culture 256
- Neuroscience 259
- Both ways 266
- Conclusion 270
Chapter 17. Chatting with Noam Chomsky 273
Index 283
- A 283
- B 283
- C 284
- F 285
- D 285
- G 285
- E 285
- H 286
- K 286
- I 286
- L 286
- J 286
- P 287
- N 287
- R 287
- O 287
- M 287
- T 288
- W 288
- U 288
- Y 288
- S 288
- V 288
Color Plates 289

Fragments of Mind and Brain

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