Your Brain and Your Self: What You Need to Know

by Neirynck, Jacques

• ISBN13: 9783540875222
• ISBN10: 3540875220
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-12-01
• Publisher: SPRINGER

Summary

"How does my brain work? Why am I conscious? Whore is my memory? Is what I perceive around me reality or just an illusion? We all ask these questions, which we could sum up in a single question: who am I?" "Recent discoveries about the brain allow us to ask such questions more pointedly, hoping to define more clearly the relations of the brain with the mind, of man with his body." "This book is based on numerous discussions with specialists. It attempts to determine the slate of the art. It is organized in chapters that can be read in continuity, but it is equally possible to discover the chapters in a different order."--BOOK JACKET.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
The Controversial Seat of Myself	p. 3
The Dualist Fantasy	p. 4
Insanity and Criminal Responsibility	p. 5
Nervous Diseases, or Psychological Diseases?	p. 6
Western Medicine and Cartesianism	p. 6
The History of Errors About the Brain	p. 7
A Simple Architecture of the Brain	p. 17
The Neuron	p. 17
The Glial Cell	p. 19
The Fantasies of the Neuron	p. 20
The Structure of the Nervous System	p. 21
The Limbic System	p. 24
Reticular Activating System	p. 24
Cortical Areas	p. 24
The Visual Cortex	p. 26
The Auditory Cortex	p. 28
The Motor Cortex	p. 28
The Prefrontal Cortex	p. 29
The Limits of Functional Localization	p. 29
The Blood-Brain Barrier	p. 29
The Development of the Brain	p. 30
Apprenticeship	p. 31
Language	p. 32
Thought	p. 32
Seeing Through Oneself: Brain Imaging	p. 35
Magnetoencephalography (MEG)	p. 35
Tomography: CT and PET	p. 36
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)	p. 37
Research Using Imagery	p. 38
The Brain as a Black Box	p. 39
Virtual Reality	p. 40
Dispersed Memories	p. 43
Storage in Neurons	p. 44
The Generation of Neurons in the Canary	p. 45
The Hippocampus of the London Taxi Driver	p. 46
Two Diseases of Memory	p. 46
The Prevention of Parkinson Disease	p. 49
A Problematical Treatment	p. 50
The Complications of Therapy	p. 52
Non-Pharmacological Treatment	p. 53
Improving Surgical Precision	p. 54
Future Perspectives	p. 55
The Treatment of Alzheimer Disease	p. 59
The Consequences of AD	p. 60
Today's Treatments	p. 60
Research for New Therapy	p. 61
The Cerebrovascular Accident	p. 65
A Typical Stroke	p. 65
Classic Therapy	p. 66
CVA and Higher Functions	p. 66
Prevention	p. 67
Hope from Research	p. 67
Rehabilitation	p. 69
The Fatality of Tumors	p. 73
Classification of Tumors	p. 74
The Search for Treatment	p. 74
Altered States of Consciousness	p. 79
Neurology of the OBE	p. 80
Neurology of NDE	p. 82
Divergent Opinions	p. 82
The Myth of the Artificial Brain	p. 85
The Hesitant Birth of the Computer	p. 86
Two Decisive Inventions	p. 87
The Two Limits of von Neumann's Computer	p. 88
Voice Processing	p. 89
Practically Insoluble Mathematical Problems	p. 90
Comparison Between Computer and Brain	p. 91
Artificial Neuronal Networks	p. 92
Braitenberg's Project: Mechanical and Evolutionary Psychology	p. 95
The Blue Brain Project	p. 97
Bio-Inspired Computing	p. 98
Creation of Consciousness	p. 98
The Essential Question	p. 99
Answers to the Essential Question	p. 101
Engineers and Biologists Afflicted with the Karl Marx Syndrome	p. 101
The Power and the Fragility of Oneself	p. 105
The End of Vitalism	p. 105
The Trap of Reductionism	p. 106
A Model is not Reality	p. 107
Existence of the Mind	p. 108
Proof by Placebo	p. 109
Opinions on Free Will	p. 111
Bibliography	p. 113
Index	p. 117
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.