Neural Geographies

Neural Geographies draws together recent feminist and deconstructive theories, early Freudian neurology and contemporary connectionist theories of cognition. In this original work, Elizabeth A. Wilson explores the convergence between Derrida, Freud and recent cognitive theory to pursue two important issues: the nature of cognition and neurology, and the politics of feminist and critical interventions into contemporary scientific psychology. This book seeks to reorient the usual presumptions of critical studies of the sciences by addressing the divisions between the static and the changeable; the natural and the political; the neuro-cognitive and the cultural that have been traditional to both scientific and critical accounts of neurology and cognition.

Neural nets offer a fascinating new strategy for spatial analysis, and their application holds enormous potential for the geographic sciences. However, the number of studies that have utilized these techniques is limited. This lack of interest can be attributed, in part, to lack of exposure, to the use of extensive and often confusing jargon, and to the misapprehension that, without an underlying statistical model, the explanatory power of the neural net is very low. Neural Nets: Applications for Geography attacks all three issues; the text demonstrates a wide variety of neural net applications in geography in a simple manner, with minimal jargon. The volume presents an introduction to neural nets that describes some of the basic concepts, as well as providing a more mathematical treatise for those wishing further details on neural net architecture. The bulk of the text, however, is devoted to descriptions of neural net applications in such broad-ranging fields as census analysis, predicting the spread of AIDS, describing synoptic controls on mountain snowfall, examining the relationships between atmospheric circulation and tropical rainfall, and the remote sensing of polar cloud and sea ice characteristics. The text illustrates neural nets employed in modes analogous to multiple regression analysis, cluster analysis, and maximum likelihood classification. Not only are the neural nets shown to be equal or superior to these more conventional methods, particularly where the relationships have a strong nonlinear component, but they are also shown to contain significant explanatory power. Several chapters demonstrate that the nets themselves can be decomposed to illuminate causative linkages between different events in both the physical and human environments.

Brain Culture investigates the American obsession with the health of the brain. Davi Johnson Thornton looks at familiar messages, tracing how brain science and colorful brain images produced by scientific technologies are taken up and distributed in popular media. She tracks the message that, "you are your brain" across multiple contemporary contexts, analyzing its influence on child development, family life, education, and public policy. Our fixation on the brain is not simply a reaction to scientific progress, but a cultural phenomenon tied to values of individualism and limitless achievement.

10.2 Summary of Ideas ..................................................... 256 10.2.1 Spatial Behavior As Rules For Decision Making ................................... 258 10.2.2. Cognitive Mapping ......................................................................... 258 10.2.3. Storing Information ................................................. " ...................... 260 10.2.4. Searching ..................................................................................... 260 10.2.5. Learning ........................................................................................ 261 10.2.6. Judging Similarity .......................................................................... 261 10.2.7 Neural Geographic Information Science (NGIS) .................................... 262 REFERENCES ............................................... 265 INDEX ........................ .............. 279 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................... 287 x LIST OF TABLES Table 8.1: The types of similarity comparisons created for the experiment to determine the effect ofx as a first or second common or distinctive feature (Lloyd, Rostkowska-Covington, and Steinke 1996). Table 9.1: Data used to compute the gravity model using regression and a neural network. Data for all variables are scaled so that the highest value equals 0.9 and the lowest value equals 0.1. Table 9.2: Class means for 11 socio-economic and life-cycle variables for the Black, Integrated, and White classes. Table 9.3: Weights for neuron at row 5 and column 1 that learned the blue horizontal rectangle map symbol. LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: Spatial cognition is a research area of interest for both geography and psychology. Both disciplines are interested in fundamental ideas related to encoding processes, internal representations, and decoding processes. Figure 1.2: The place names on this map of New Orleans depict the propositions used for navigation by local residents. A similar map appeared in the June 30, 1991, edition of The Times-Picayune.

This volume traces the modern critical and performance history of this play, one of Shakespeare's most-loved and most-performed comedies. The essay focus on such modern concerns as feminism, deconstruction, textual theory, and queer theory.

This book defines and discusses the term “hidden geographies” in two ways: systematically and by presenting a variety of examples of the research fields and topics concerning hidden geographies, with the aim of stimulating further basic and applied research in this area. While the term is quite rarely used in the scientific literature (more often as a figure of speech than to illustrate or problematize its deeper meaning), we argue that hidden geographies are everywhere and many of them have significant impacts on (other) natural and social phenomena and processes, subsequently triggering changes, for example in landscape, economy, culture, health or quality of life. The introductory section of the book conceptualises hidden geographies and discusses cognitive geography, symbolization of space, and the hidden geographies in mystical literature. Case studies of hidden environmental geographies address soils, air pollution, coastal pollution and the allocation of an astronomical tourism site. Revealing hidden historical and sacred places is illustrated through examples of the visualisation of the subterranean mining landscape, the analysis of the historical road network and trade, border stones and historical spatial boundaries, and the monastic Carthusian space. Hidden urban geographies are discussed in terms of the urban development of an entire city, presenting the role of geography in rescuing architecture, revealing illegal urbanisation, and the quality of habitation in Roma neighbourhoods. Case studies of hidden population geographies shed light on the ageing of rural populations and the impact of spatial-demographic disparities on fertility variations. Discussions of hidden social and economic geographies problematize recent social changes and conflicts in a country, present the implementation of the fourth industrial revolution and borders as hidden obstacles in the organisation of public transport. Hidden geographies are explicitly linked to perceptions and explanations in case studies that address local responses to perceived marginalisation in a city, the solo women travellers’ perceived risk and safety, and hidden geographical contexts of visible post-war landscapes. The book brings such a diversity of views, ideas and examples related to hidden geographies that can serve both to deepen their understanding and their various impacts on our lives and environment, and to attract further cross-disciplinary interest in considering hidden geographies – in research and in our every-day lives.

Exploring the dynamic growth, change, and complexity of qualitative research in human geography, The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Geography brings together leading scholars in the field to examine its history, assess the current state of the art, and project future directions. "In its comprehensive coverage, accessible text, and range of illustrative studies, past and present, the Handbook has established an impressive new standard in presenting qualitative methods to geographers." - David Ley, University of British Columbia Moving beyond textbook rehearsals of standard issues, the Handbook shows how empirical details of qualitative research can be linked to the broader social, theoretical, political, and policy concerns of qualitative geographers and the communities within which they work. The book is organized into three sections: Part I: Openings engages the history of qualitative geography, and details the ways that research, and the researcher′s place within it, are conceptualized within broader academic, political, and social currents. Part II: Encounters and Collaborations describes the different strategies of inquiry that qualitative geographers use, and the tools and techniques that address the challenges that arise in the research process. Part III: Making Sense explores the issues and processes of interpretation, and the ways researchers communicate their results. Retrospective as well as prospective in its approach, this is geography′s first peer-to-peer engagement with qualitative research detailing how to conceive, carry out and communicate qualitative research in the twenty-first century. Suitable for postgraduate students, academics, and practitioners alike, this is the methods resource for researchers in human geography.

Breastwork delivers an original and personal approach to a near-universal practice and doesn't shy from controversy or controversial topics, such as sexual desire and breastfeeding. It features a broad range of illustrations from Renaissance paintings of mother and child (Madonna del Latte) to Jerry Hall breastfeeding on the cover of Vanity Fair and Kate Langbroek breastfeeding on The Panel to a banned New Zealand health poster of a man breastfeeding at work.