Product Description

A textbook for psychology, neuroscience, pre-medical students, and everybody interested in the neuroscience of cognition.
A wave of new research is transforming our understanding of the human mind and brain. Many educational fields now require a basic understanding of the new topic of cognitive neuroscience. However, available textbooks are written more for biology audiences than for psychology and related majors. This text aims to bridge that gap. A background in biology of neuroscience is not required. The thematic approach builds on widely understood concepts in psychology, such as working memory, selective attention, and social cognition. Edited by two leading experts in the field, the book guides the reader along a clear path to understand the latest findings.
A support website at http://textbooks.elsevier.com provides all figures in electronic format with export to Powerpoint, as well as supplementary material including movies and support material for teachers and students.
(note: support website will be available after June 10, 2007)

FEATURES
* Written specifically for psychology, pre-medical, education and neuroscience undergraduate and graduate students
* The thematic approach builds on on accepted concepts, not presuming a background in neuroscience or biology
* Ancillary material includes a companion website and Learning Guide for students
* Includes two Appendices on brain imaging and neural networks written by Thomas Ramsoy and Igor Aleksander
* Introduces the brain in a step-by-step, readable style, with gradually increasing sophistication
* Richly illustrated in full color with clear and detailed drawings that build the brain from top to bottome, simplifying the layout of the brain for students
* Pedagogy includes exercises and study questions at the end of each chapter, including drawing exercises

* Written specifically for psychology, pre-medical, education and neuroscience undergraduate and graduate students
* The thematic approach builds on on accepted concepts, not presuming a background in neuroscience or biology
* Ancillary material includes a companion website and Learning Guide for students
* Includes two Appendices on brain imaging and neural networks written by Thomas Ramsoy and Igor Aleksander
* Introduces the brain in a step-by-step, readable style, with gradually increasing sophistication
* Richly illustrated in full color with clear and detailed drawings that build the brain from top to bottome, simplifying the layout of the brain for students
* Pedagogy includes exercises and study questions at the end of each chapter, including drawing exercises

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104656 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-11
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 568 pages

Review
"This is a wonderful, unique textbook...numerous helpful, vivid color illustrations and an engaging writing style throughout, the text makes inherently technical material accessible without losing sight of the exciting new findings and ideas coming from the research."
--Nelson Cowan, Curators' Professor, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, USA


"Masterfully organized and comprehensive in its coverage, this textbook will surely be THE introduction to cognitive neuroscience...A powerful pedagogical achievement, and a boon for both the novice and the advanced student."
--Patricia Smith Churchland, Chair
UC President's Professor of Philosophy
University of California San Diego, USA

"Comprehensive, authoritative and beautifully illustrated, this is a superb introduction to cognitive neuroscience. ...The depth and sophistication of its treatment of key topics make it more than a mere introductory text, though, and it can be read with profit by all with an interest in how the brain supports cognition, whether student or established researcher."
--Michael D. Rugg, Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine, USA

Review
"This is a wonderful introductory cognitive neuroscience textbook that would be an excellent required book for an undergraduate course. I highly recommend it."
-Michael J. Schrift, University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, in Doody's

"This is a wonderful, unique textbook...numerous helpful, vivid color illustrations and an engaging writing style throughout, the text makes inherently technical material accessible without losing sight of the exciting new findings and ideas coming from the research."
--Nelson Cowan, Curators' Professor, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, USA


"Masterfully organized and comprehensive in its coverage, this textbook will surely be THE introduction to cognitive neuroscience...A powerful pedagogical achievement, and a boon for both the novice and the advanced student."
--Patricia Smith Churchland, Chair
UC President's Professor of Philosophy
University of California San Diego, USA

"Comprehensive, authoritative and beautifully illustrated, this is a superb introduction to cognitive neuroscience. ...The depth and sophistication of its treatment of key topics make it more than a mere introductory text, though, and it can be read with profit by all with an interest in how the brain supports cognition, whether student or established researcher."
--Michael D. Rugg, Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine, USA

From the Back Cover
A textbook for psychology, neuroscience, pre-medical students, and everybody interested in the neuroscience of cognition.

A wave of new research is transforming our understanding of the human mind and brain. Many educational fields now require a basic understanding of the new topic of cognitive neuroscience. However, available textbooks are written more for biology audiences than for psychology and related majors. This text aims to bridge that gap. It does not require a background in biology or neuroscience. Rather, it adopts an easy-to-understand thematic approach, building on widely understood concepts in psychology, such as working memory, selective attention, and social cognition. Edited by two leading experts in the field, the book guides the reader along a clear and simple path to understand the latest findings.
The brain is introduced in a step-by-step, readable style. Hundreds of color graphics have been carefully selected to illustrate all points and the research explained. Beautifully clear artists drawings are used to build a brain from top to bottom, simplifying the layout of the brain. Drawing exercises at the end of each chapter are provided to strengthen the students understanding. Well-known chapter authors include Morris Moscovitch (McGill University) on memory, Frank Tong (Vanderbilt University) on vision, Nicole Gage (UC Irvine) on audition and speech perception, Mark Johnson (University College London) on child development, Elkhonon Goldberg (New York University School of Medicine and Director of The Institute of Neuropsychology and Cognitive Performance) on executive functions, and Bernard Baars (The Neurosciences Institute San Diego) on attention and consciousness. Two Appendices provide a Tutorial on Neural Networks by Igor Aleksander (Imperial College london), and a more detailed description of brain imaging methods from Thomas Ramsoy and colleagues from the Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance.
A support website at http://textbooks.elsevier.com provides all figures in electronic format with export to Powerpoint, as well as supplementary material including movies and support material for teachers and students.

FEATURES
* Specifically tailored for psychology, pre-medical, education and neuroscience undergraduate and graduate students
* Utilizes easy-to-understand thematic approach, based on accepted concepts, not presuming a background in neuroscience or biology
* The accompanying website and Learning Guide serve to deepen students understanding
* Includes two Appendices from leading experts in brain imaging and neural networks
* Introduces the brain in a step-by-step, readable style, with gradually increasing sophistication with beautiful clear artists drawings building a brain from bottom to top, simplifying the layout of the brain
* Exercises and study questions at the end of each chapter, including drawing exercises to strengthen the students understanding

Customer Reviews

Advanced introductory text
Yes this is an introductory text with the necessary starting points on the origins, importance of, and framework for studying cognitive neuroscience. And like introductory texts on neuroscience, it breaks down brain functions into separate chapters (e.g., vision, hearing, language, memory). But that's where the similarities with typical texts end. None of the chapters are dry; there is typically a conversational tone and always, a focus on the big picture - how the mind works. They add just enough clinical data and interesting asides to enrich the material without bogging it or the reader down. There is no skimping on illustrations and imaging and this enhances the material even further. The end result is that by the end of each chapter you know the material very well and wouldn't you know it, you've started thinking about how the mind really works and some of the philosophical implications of brain function. That's more than I expect from most textbooks, so I think the authors are being a bit modest in calling this book an introduction to cognitive neuroscience; it is that and much more.

Fine writing and brilliant ideas
I am a clinical psychiatrist and neuroscience aficionado who happens to be friends with one editor and one writer of COGNITION, BRAIN, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. Naturally, nothing in my social relationships with these two principles will influence in the least my objective and judicious review of this volume.

Ah, this last sentence! Do you think it is likely to be true or false or somewhere in between? The current scientific understanding of these kind of cognitive ambiguities, and a plethora of other topics, is well served in this uniformly careful account of contemporary studies of mind and brain. As Dr. Baars asserts in the Preface, modern neuroscience is a "marriage of the cognitive and brain sciences". Identify some of the many academic disciplines attending the wedding party, and you will find, among the usual suspects, some brand-new, still wet behind the ears areas of study like neurotheology, theoretical neurobiology and array tomography. How will they ever communicate with the reader? Fortunately, the two editors qua event planners are more than up to the task and express in clear sentences the broad themes emerging from the multi-disciplinary babel.

The textbook's organization follows a conventional course in order to follow "the gentlest learning curve possible":


Mind and brain - Bernard J. Baars.
A framework - Bernard J. Baars.
Neurons and their connections - Bernard J. Baars.
The tools: Imaging the living brain - Bernard J. Baars and Thomas Ramsoy.
The brain - Bernard J. Baars.
Vision - Frank Tong and Joel Pearson.
Hearing and speech - Nicole M. Gage.
Attention and consciousness - Bernard J. Baars.
Learning, memory and knowledge - Morris Moscovitch, Jason M. Chein, Deborah Talmi, and Melanie Cohn.
Thinking and Problem Solving - Bernard J. Baars.
Language - Bernard J. Baars.
Goals, executive control, and action - Elkhonon M. Goldberg and Dmitri H. Bougakov.
Emotion - Katharine McGovern.
Social Cognition: Perceiving the mental states of others - Katharine McGovern.
Development - Nicole M. Gage and Mark H. Johnson.
Appendices.
A. Neural Models: a Route to Cognitive Brain Theory - Igor Aleksander.
B. Methods for observing the living brain - Thomas Ramsoy, Daniela Balslev, and Olaf Paulson.

The 16 authors of these chapters bring not only outstanding expertise but scholarly passion to their subjects. The two editors have done a masterful job insuring the writing is done at similar levels of detail and generalization, helped by the fact that the senior editor wrote seven and co-authored one of the 15 chapters. Fortunately, Dr. Baars' writing (he is well known as the author of A COGNITIVE THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS) remains among the best organized and most lucid of modern neuroscientists.

The book pays homage to William James. In 1890, James was a committed empiricist with command of the then-current literature of the emerging field of scientific psychology. The page in the Reference section of CBC which begins with James' own THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY lists 43 texts, 26 of which were published during or after the year 2000. By extension, this means that 600 of the 1000 citations are less then seven years old. In the book world, that's as current as it gets. Following now standard practice, the book supervenes on a supportive website - textbooks.elsevier.com - which provides all figures in electronic format with export to Powerpoint, as well as supplementary material including movies.

Throughout the book, numerous depictions of difficult concepts approach pedagogical perfection. For example, Baars invites the reader to "grow a brain" and proceeds, through a series of pictures and discussion, to introduce the fundamental features of brain anatomy. By sequentially meeting the major landmarks through cartoons - brainstem, pons, thalami, hippocampus, amygdale, ventricles, basal ganglia, fiber tracts, cerebellum and cortex - the reader is enabled intuitively (subliminally?) to build a brain representation which sticks in the memory.

I reckon the volume aims to be THE primary textbook in cognitive neuroscience, the canonical statement, as it were. I think it makes a good beginning toward that end. But consider. The most widely used textbook in pharmacology is Hardman. Limbard and Gilman's THE PHRAMACOLOGICAL BASIS OF THERAPEUTICS. My tenth edition weighs in at 2148 pages. In computational neuroscience, it's Arbib's HANDBOOK OF BRAIN THEORY AND NEURAL NETWORKS, 1290 pages. In basic physics I will go with THE FEYNMAN LECTURES ON PHYSICS. The pages aren't sequentially numbered, but there are three volumes making, I would guess, around 1500 pages.

This poor text is a puny 546 pages. However, the baby is so brilliant and beautiful, I pray that in the second edition there is a more complete account. Here is what is needed:

* A section which maps the entire landscape of mind-brain studies, allowing the reader to see clearly where cognitive neuroscience is located.
* A chapter on neurochemistry and neuropharmacology.
* A chapter on the cognitive unconscious and context.
* A chapter on how the brain does mathematics and music.
* A chapter on the paranormal and the brain (just because people are always asking).
* A chapter on play, fun, humor, altruism, cooperation, creativity.
* A chapter on evolutionary neuroscience.
* A chapter on spiritual experiences and the brain. (Still following the lead of William James.)
* A chapter on consciousness.
* A chapter devoted to current attempts at "whole brain" theories.
* A section on what's hot in current research and what's needed.

In summary: COGNITION, BRAIN, AND CONSCIOUSNESS provides a somewhat curtailed overview of the emerging science of mind and brain. It is accessible to students and interested readers at all levels. It is beautifully illustrated and pedagogically advanced. It is the best of its kind now available.

Overall, the best book I've read on the subject.
I couldn't agree more with the editorial reviews of this book. It is excellent!

I'm reading the book just out of interest in the subject matter and I'm not involved professionally with neurology. I have recently read several books on the topic though and that list would include:

. Mapping the Mind - Rita Carter's excellent survey of brain functions (similar in some ways to this book and really excellent!).
. Exploring Consciousness - Another very good Rita Carter text.
. The Neuron - Cell and Molecular Biology - Irwin Levitan and Leonard K Kaczmarek's 500+ page non-light reading but fascinating book on neurons.
. Quest for Consciousness - Christopher Koch's (and Francis Crick's) insightful search for the neural correlates of consciousness.
. Wider Than The Sky - Gene Edelman's equally fascinating perspective on the same type of research.
. In Search of Memory - Eric Kandel's part autobiography, part neurology book.
. Etc.

Each of those books were wonderful and I plan on going back and reading them again just to see how my perspective has changed from what I've learned since the last time. But, if I had to pick one book to provide a survey of how the brain is organized and functions I believe this is the book I would chose. It is actually the first textbook I can remember reading in the past 40 years but it didn't remind me of the textbooks of that era.

Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness has the following assets:

. It is well organized and well indexed.
. The writing style seems to take advantage of the authors' understanding of the learning process.
. It provides more than a casual introduction to each of the topics it covers.
. I thought it provided a balanced view of conflicting theories and approaches, giving the pros and cons of each.
. The book is extremely well illustrated throughout. Each illustration seems very thoughtfully composed and selected.
. It should, as the editorial reviews suggest, appeal to a range of readers from "student through established researcher."

There are some typographical problems but they are minor (e.g. References to Appendix C - which doesn't exist). I ordered the book before its release date and actually received it before June 11th so I can imagine typos happening. There appears to be extensive support for the material on the publisher's website but I haven't checked that out as yet.

So I'm really writing this to thank the Bernard Baars and Nicole Gage for providing such amazing material. It is really outstanding and even though it is expensive I would say without hesitation that it is more than worth its price!