Exploring Cognition Damaged Brains And Neural Networks

An innovative, topical and engaging reader to accompany advanced undergraduate and postgraduate courses in cognition Presents a unique collection of key articles by leading international researchers in cognition, cognitive neuropsychology and connectionism Brings together in one place articles that challenge or inform traditional theories of cognition Spotlights current areas of debate and controversy in cogntive psychology of interest to students and researchers alike Editors are widely known in their fields and are authors of successful textbooks Introduction and linking sections provide essential context and evaluation

Exploring Cognition: Damaged Brains and Neural Networks analyses the contribution made by cognitive neuropsychology and connectionist modelling to theoretical explanations of cognitive processes. Bringing together evidence from both damaged brains and neural networks, this exciting and innovative approach leads to re-evaluation of traditional theories: connectionist models lesioned to mimic the residual function of the damaged brain and rehabilitated to simulate the process of recovery suggest underlying mechanisms and challenge previous interpretations. In this reader key articles by leading international researchers are combined with linking commentaries that provide a context, highlight the conceptual themes and evaluate the evidence. Carefully selected to include hotly debated topics, the papers cover, among others, the controversies surrounding explanations for category specificity in object recognition and for covert recognition of faces and words; the mechanisms underlying the use of regular and irregular past tenses; and the reading of regularly and irregularly spelled words. The challenges posed by connectionist models to assumptions about the nature of dissociations, the need for symbolic rule-based operations in language processing and the modularity and localisation of processes are assessed. Exploring Cognition: Damaged Brains and Neural Networks will be of interest to advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in cognitive neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience.

This book focuses on associative memory cells and their working principles, which can be applied to associative memories and memory-relevant cognitions. Providing comprehensive diagrams, it presents the author's personal perspectives on pathology and therapeutic strategies for memory deficits in patients suffering from neurological diseases and psychiatric disorders. Associative learning is a common approach to acquire multiple associated signals, including knowledge, experiences and skills from natural environments or social interaction. The identification of the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying associative memory is important in furthering our understanding of the principles of memory formation and memory-relevant behaviors as well as in developing therapeutic strategies that enhance memory capacity in healthy individuals and improve memory deficit in patients suffering from neurological disease and psychiatric disorders. Although a series of hypotheses about neural substrates for associative memory has been proposed, numerous questions still need to be addressed, especially the basic units and their working principle in engrams and circuits specific for various memory patterns. This book summarizes the developments concerning associative memory cells reported in current and past literature, providing a valuable overview of the field for neuroscientists, psychologists and students.

This second edition presents the enormous progress made in recent years in the many subfields related to the two great questions : how does the brain work? and, How can we build intelligent machines? This second edition greatly increases the coverage of models of fundamental neurobiology, cognitive neuroscience, and neural network approaches to language. (Midwest).

Music offers a unique opportunity to better understand the organization of the human brain. Like language, music exists in all human societies. Like language, music is a complex, rule-governed activity that seems specific to humans, and associated with a specific brain architecture. Yet unlike most other high-level functions of the human brain - and unlike language - music is a skill at which only a minority of people become proficient. The study of music as a major brain function has for some time been relatively neglected. Just recently, however, we have witnessed an explosion in research activities on music perception and performance and their correlates in the human brain. This volume brings together an outstanding collection of international authorities - from the fields of music, neuroscience, psychology, and neurology - to describe the amazing advances being made in understanding the complex relationship between music and the brain. Aimed at psychologists and neuroscientists, this is a book that will lay the foundations for a cognitive neuroscience of music.

Cognitive disorders are defined as those in which a limitation of cognitive functioning is the main feature. They include: amnestic disorders, Huntington's disease, and mental retardation, dementia, delirium, aphasia, and cognitive disorders not otherwise specified. This book brings presents leading researchers from throughout the world.

A cutting-edge reference source for the interdisciplinary field of computational cognitive modeling.

This book examines the relationship between human language and biology in order to determine whether the biological foundations of language can offer deep insights into the nature and form of language and linguistic cognition. Challenging the assumption in biolinguistics and neurolinguistics that natural language and linguistic cognition can be reconciled with neurobiology, the author argues that reducing representation to cognitive systems and cognitive systems to neural populations is reductive, leading to inferences about the cognitive basis of linguistic performance based on assuming (false) dependencies. Instead, he finds that biological implementations of cognitive rather than the biological structures themselves, are the driver behind linguistic structures. In particular, this book argues that the biological roots of language are useful only for an understanding of the emergence of linguistic capacity as a whole, but ultimately irrelevant to understanding the character of language. Offering an antidote to the current thinking embracing ‘biologism’ in linguistic sciences, it will be of interest to readers in linguistics, the cognitive and brain sciences, and the points at which these disciplines converge with the computer sciences.