Synopses & Reviews
Characterizing the computational architecture and neurobiological mechanisms underlying consciousness remains a major unsolved problem in cognitive neuroscience, but it has become an area of intense research. Thanks to new advances in stimulation paradigms, brain imaging techniques, and neuronal theorizing, the issue now appears to be empirically addressable. Yet a major challenge still confronts these novel empirical and theoretical proposals: will they be able to help clinicians confronted with patients in coma or vegetative state? Can they help define novel diagnostic or even therapeutic tools? In the present book,
Synopsis
Fifteen of the foremost scientists in this field presented testable theoretical models of consciousness and discussed how our understanding of the role that consciousness plays in our cognitive processes is being refined with some surprising results.
Synopsis
Characterizing Consciousness presents testable theoretical models of consciousness, and discusses how our understanding of the role consciousness plays in our cognitive processes.
Table of Contents
Preface.- Missing Links in the Evolution of Language.- Consciousness as a Decision to Engage.- Thinking about Brain and Consciousness.- The Global Neuronal Workspace Model of Conscious Access: From Neuronal Architectures to Clinical Applications.- Disorders of Consciousness; What Do We Know?- When Thoughts Become Actions: Imaging Disorders of Consciousness.- Rhythmic Neuronal Synchronization Subserves Selective Attentional Processing.- Studying Consciousness Using Direct Recording from Single Neurons in Humans.- Intrinsic Activity and Consciousness.- Beyond Libet: Long-term Prediction of Free Choices from Neuroimaging Signals.- Subliminal Motivation of the Human Brain.- From Conscious Motor Intention to Movement Awareness.- Subject Index