Michael S. Gazzaniga

Bio: Michael S. Gazzaniga is an academic researcher from University of California, Santa Barbara. The author has contributed to research in topics: Lateralization of brain function & Corpus callosum. The author has an hindex of 92, co-authored 372 publications receiving 35305 citations. Previous affiliations of Michael S. Gazzaniga include Dartmouth College & New York University.

The Cognitive Neurosciences

Abstract: Each edition of this classic reference has proved to be a benchmark in the developing field of cognitive neuroscience. The fourth edition of The Cognitive Neurosciences continues to chart new directions in the study of the biologic underpinnings of complex cognition -- the relationship between the structural and physiological mechanisms of the nervous system and the psychological reality of the mind. The material in this edition is entirely new, with all chapters written specifically for it. Since the publication of the third edition, the field of cognitive neuroscience has made rapid and dramatic advances; fundamental stances are changing and new ideas are emerging. This edition reflects the vibrancy of the field, with research in development and evolution that finds a dynamic growth pattern becoming specific and fixed, and research in plasticity that sees the neuronal systems always changing; exciting new empirical evidence on attention that also verifies many central tenets of longstanding theories; work that shows the boundaries of the motor system pushed further into cognition; memory research that, paradoxically, provides insight into how humans imagine future events; pioneering theoretical and methodological work in vision; new findings on how genes and experience shape the language faculty; new ideas about how the emotional brain develops and operates; and research on consciousness that ranges from a novel mechanism for how the brain generates the baseline activity necessary to sustain conscious experience to a bold theoretical attempt to make the problem of qualia more tractable.

The new cognitive neurosciences

Abstract: Shows the many advances in the field of cognitive neurosciences. From the molecular level up to that of human consciousness, the contributions cover one of the most fascinating areas of science - the relationship between the structural and physiological mechanisms of the brain/nervous system.

Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind

Abstract: Three leading figures in the field of cognitive neuroscience provide an engaging, narrative-driven overview of this path-breaking field. Taking a highly interdisciplinary approach, the authors balance cognitive theory, with neuroscientific and neuropsychological evidence to reveal what we currently know about how the human mind works and to encourage students to think like cognitive neuroscientists. The text has been reorganised to move more seamlessly from micro to macro level topics, and its underlying pedagogy strengthened in order to make it an even more effective teaching tool. (Presentation editeur)

Cerebral specialization and interhemispheric communication: does the corpus callosum enable the human condition?

Abstract: Summary The surgical disconnection of the cerebral hemispheres half-brain. By having the callosum serve as the great communication link between redundant systems, a precreates an extraordinary opportunity to study basic existing system could be jettisoned as new functions neurological mechanisms: the organization of the sensory developed in one hemisphere, while the other hemisphere and motors systems, the cortical representation of the could continue to perform the previous functions for both perceptual and cognitive processes, the lateralization of half-brains. Split-brain studies have also revealed the function, and, perhaps most importantly, how the divided complex mosaic of mental processes that participate in brain yields clues to the nature of conscious experience. human cognition. And yet, even though each cerebral Studies of split-brain patients over the last 40 years hemisphere has its own set of capacities, with the left have resulted in numerous insights into the processes of hemisphere specialized for language and speech and perception, attention, memory, language and reasoning major problem-solving capacities and the right abilities. When the constellation of findings is considered hemisphere specialized for tasks such as facial recognition as a whole, one sees the cortical arena as a patchwork of and attentional monitoring, we all have the subjective specialized processes. When this is considered in the light experience of feeling totally integrated. Indeed, even of new studies on the lateralization of functions, it becomes though many of these functions have an automatic quality reasonable to suppose that the corpus callosum has to them and are carried out by the brain prior to our enabled the development of the many specialized systems conscious awareness of them, our subjective belief and by allowing the reworking of existing cortical areas feeling is that we are in charge of our actions. These while preserving existing functions. Thus, while language phenomena appear to be related to our left hemisphere’s emerged in the left hemisphere at the cost of pre-existing interpreter, a device that allows us to construct theories perceptual systems, the critical features of the bilaterally about the relationship between perceived events, actions and feelings. present perceptual system were spared in the opposite

Principles of Neural Science

Abstract: I have developed "tennis elbow" from lugging this book around the past four weeks, but it is worth the pain, the effort, and the aspirin. It is also worth the (relatively speaking) bargain price. Including appendixes, this book contains 894 pages of text. The entire panorama of the neural sciences is surveyed and examined, and it is comprehensive in its scope, from genomes to social behaviors. The editors explicitly state that the book is designed as "an introductory text for students of biology, behavior, and medicine," but it is hard to imagine any audience, interested in any fragment of neuroscience at any level of sophistication, that would not enjoy this book. The editors have done a masterful job of weaving together the biologic, the behavioral, and the clinical sciences into a single tapestry in which everyone from the molecular biologist to the practicing psychiatrist can find and appreciate his or

The Attention System of the Human Brain

Abstract: : The concept of attention as central to human performance extends back to the start of experimental psychology, yet even a few years ago, it would not have been possible to outline in even a preliminary form a functional anatomy of the human attentional system. New developments in neuroscience have opened the study of higher cognition to physiological analysis, and have revealed a system of anatomical areas that appear to be basic to the selection of information for focal (conscious) processing. The importance of attention is its unique role in connecting the mental level of description of processes used in cognitive science with the anatomical level common in neuroscience. Sperry describes the central role that mental concepts play in understanding brain function. As is the case for sensory and motor systems of the brain, our knowledge of the anatomy of attention is incomplete. Nevertheless, we can now begin to identify some principles of organization that allow attention to function as a unified system for the control of mental processing. Although many of our points are still speculative and controversial, we believe they constitute a basis for more detailed studies of attention from a cognitive-neuroscience viewpoint. Perhaps even more important for furthering future studies, multiple methods of mental chronometry, brain lesions, electrophysiology, and several types of neuro-imaging have converged on common findings.

The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review.

Abstract: The emerging field of emotion regulation studies how individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express them. This review takes an evolutionary perspective and characterizes emotion in terms of response tendencies. Emotion regulation is denned and distinguished from coping, mood regulation, defense, and affect regulation. In the increasingly specialized discipline of psychology, the field of emotion regulation cuts across traditional boundaries and provides common ground. According to a process model of emotion regulation, emotion may be regulated at five points in the emotion generative process: (a) selection of the situation, (b) modification of the situation, (c) deployment of attention, (d) change of cognitions, and (e) modulation of responses. The field of emotion regulation promises new insights into age-old questions about how people manage their emotions.