The New Science of Consciousness: Exploring the Complexity of Brain, Mind, and Self - Hardcover

Paul L. Nunez

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1633882195 ISBN 13: 9781633882195

Publisher: Prometheus, 2016

Synopsis

This book explains in laypersons' terms a new approach to studying consciousness based on a partnership between neuroscientists and complexity scientists. The author, a physicist turned neuroscientist, outlines essential features of this partnership. The new science goes well beyond traditional cognitive science and simple neural networks, which are often the focus in artificial intelligence research. It involves many fields including neuroscience, artificial intelligence, physics, cognitive science, and psychiatry.
What causes autism, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's disease? How does our unconscious influence our actions? As the author shows, these important questions can be viewed in a new light when neuroscientists and complexity scientists work together. This cross-disciplinary approach also offers fresh insights into the major unsolved challenge of our age: the origin of self-awareness. Do minds emerge from brains? Or is something more involved?
Using human social networks as a metaphor, the author explains how brain behavior can be compared with the collective behavior of large-scale global systems. Emergent global systems that interact and form relationships with lower levels of organization and the surrounding environment provide useful models for complex brain functions.
By blending lucid explanations with illuminating analogies, this book offers the general reader a window into the latest exciting developments in brain research.

About this title

Review

PRAISE FOR THE WORK OF PAUL L. NUNEZ:

"The author presents many thought-provoking observations and hypotheses and in many cases demonstrates his ability to present complex physical and mathematical phenomena in a way that will be readily understood by readers without substantial training in either discipline."
-" --Journal of the American Medical Association" (reviewing "Brain, Mind and the Structure of Reality")

Paul L. Nunez is a leading expert on brain dynamics, particularly on the mechanisms of EEG generation. This volume is an impressive compendium of major current topics in physics, neuroscience, and cognitive science. From this foundation, Nunez attempts to build a link between the physical and mental worlds by adding consciousness to the unsolved problems of relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics.
Gyorgy Buzsaki, author of "Rhythms of the Brain"
PRAISE FOR THE WORK OF PAUL L. NUNEZ:
"The author presents many thought-provoking observations and hypotheses and in many cases demonstrates his ability to present complex physical and mathematical phenomena in a way that will be readily understood by readers without substantial training in either discipline."
-"Journal of the American Medical Association" (reviewing "Brain, Mind and the Structure of Reality")" --Journal of the American Medical Association" (reviewing "Brain, Mind and the Structure of Reality")

About the Author

Paul L. Nunez is emeritus professor of biomedical engineering at Tulane University and the owner and chief scientist of Cognitive Dissonance, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in brain research. He is the author of four books on the brain, most recently "Brain, Mind, and the Structure of Reality."

Edition details

• Publisher: Prometheus
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1633882195
• ISBN 13: 9781633882195
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 350