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Elsevier

Books in Neuroscience and physiological psychology general

  • Applications of Fuzzy Set Theory in Human Factors

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 6
    • W. Karwowski + 1 more
    • English
    The development of the theory of fuzzy sets was motivated largely by the need for a computational framework for dealing with systems in which human judgement, behavior and emotions play a dominant role. Although there are very few papers on fuzzy sets in the literature of psychology and cognitive science, the theory of fuzzy sets provides a much better model for human cognition than traditional approaches.By focusing on the application of fuzzy sets in human factors, this book provides a valuable, authoritative overview of what the theory is about and how it can be applied. An impressive feature is the broad spectrum of applications, ranging from the use of fuzzy methods in the ergonomic diagnostics of industrial production systems to approximate reasoning in risk analysis and the modeling of human-computer interactions in information retrieval tasks. Equally impressive is the very wide variety of disciplines and countries represented by the contributors.

  • Brain Sciences in Psychiatry

    • 1st Edition
    • David M. Shaw + 2 more
    • English
    Brain Sciences in Psychiatry is a 16-chapter book that first reviews neuroanatomy, neurochemistry, and physiology. Subsequent chapters describe cell of the central nervous system, transmission between neurons, and sensory functions of the brain. The book also tackles topics on initiation and control of voluntary movement and higher functions of the nervous system. The involvement of the central nervous system in controlling the secretion of hormones by the endocrine glands and the way in which many hormones affect the function of brain cells and thus the behavior are also explained. Other chapters underline topics on addiction, dementia, aggression, anxiety, affective disorders, and schizophrenia. This book will be valuable to psychiatrists and students interested in this subject matter.

  • Eye Movements from Physiology to Cognition

    Selected/Edited Proceedings of the Third European Conference on Eye Movements, Dourdan, France, September 1985
    • 1st Edition
    • J.K. O'Regan + 1 more
    • English
    Eye movement research from a range of disciplines is presented in this book. Contributions from all over the world examine theoretical and applied aspects of eye movements, including classical biocybernetic models, physiology, pathology, ocular exploration, reading, ergonomics/human factors, and microcomputer calibration techniques.

  • Methods in Psychobiology

    Specialized Laboratory Techniques in Neuropsychology and Neurobiology
    • 1st Edition
    • R. D. Myers
    • English
    Methods in Psychobiology, Volume 2, Specialized Laboratory Techniques in Neuropsychology and Neurobiology is intended for the beginning ""student"" in physiological, neuro-, bio-psychology, or whatever label one wishes to attach to the exciting interdisciplinary field which weds the brain and behavior. In contrast to Volume 1, somewhat more emphasis is given in the selection of topics to a number of difficult behavioral methods that are used frequently by individuals in the more traditional neurosciences. The book begins with a discussion of the measurement of behavioral activity. This is followed by separate chapters on techniques such as electric shock motivation; aversive learning; methods of assessing the behavioral effects of drugs; long-term intravenous infusions; and perfusion of different parts of the brain. Subsequent chapters deal with the assay of pharmacologically active substances; the split-brain technique; using microknives in brain lesion studies and the production of isolated brain-stem islands; the functional decortication technique; and recording evoked potentials.

  • Psychoprophylactic Preparation for Painless Childbirth

    • 1st Edition
    • Isidore Bonstein
    • English
    Psychoprophylactic Preparation for Painless Chidlbirth covers the principles and physiological aspects of painless childbirth through psychoprophylactic technique. Painless childbirth by the psychoprophylactic method is the result of a psychical education of the pregnant woman, during the last weeks of pregnancy. This book is composed of 13 chapters, and begins with an introduction to the psycho-physiology of the brain and its role in childbirth, as well as the pain in childbirth. The succeeding chapter outlines the course of eight lectures presented at the psychoprophylactic preparation seminar. These lectures are followed by discussions on material requisites and the directions for labor and delivery. A chapter highlights the very important role of the husband in the psychoprophylactic method. This chapter also outlines eight lectures for husbands. The concluding chapters survey the three methods to evaluate painless childbirth, including the clinical observations of the general behavior and neuro-vegative changes of the parturient, as well as the testimony of the parturient herself. This book will prove useful to obstetrics, neuro-surgeons, gynecologists, and odontologists.

  • Breathe, Walk and Chew

    The Neural Challenge: Part I
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 187
    • English
    This volume focuses on the interplay of mind and motion-the bidirectional link between thought and action. In particular, it investigates the implications that this coupling has for decision making. How do we anticipate the consequences of choices and how is the brain able to represent these choice options and their potential consequences? How are different options evaluated and how is a preferred option selected and implemented? This volume addresses these questions not only through an extensive body of knowledge consisting of individual chapters by international experts, but also through integrative group reports that pave a runway into the future. The understanding of how people make decisions is of common interest to experts working in fields such as psychology, economics, movement science, cognitive neuroscience, neuroinformatics, robotics, and sport science. So far, however, it has mainly been advanced in isolation within distinct research disciplines; in contrast, this book results from a deliberate assembly of multidisciplinary teams. It offers intense, focused, and genuine interdisciplinary perspective. It conveys state-of-the-art and outlines future research directions on the hot topic of Mind and Motion (or embodied cognition). It includes contributions from psychologists, neuroscientists, movement scientists, economists, and others.

  • On the Psychobiology of Personality

    Essays in Honor of Marvin Zuckerman
    • 1st Edition
    • Robert M Stelmack
    • English
    Zuckerman received his Ph.D. in psychology from New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Science in 1954 with a specialization in clinical psychology. After graduation, he worked for three years as a clinical psychologist in state hospitals in Norwich, Connecticut and Indianapolis, Indiana. While in the latter position the Institute for Psychiatric Research was opened in the same medical center where he was working as a clinical psychologist. He obtained a position there with a joint appointment in the department of psychiatry. This was his first interdisciplinary experience with other researchers in psychiatry, biochemistry, psychopharmacology, and psychology.His first research areas were personality assessment and the relation between parental attitudes and psychopathology. During this time, he developed the first real trait-state test for affects, starting with the Affect Adjective Check List for anxiety and then broadening it to a three-factor trait-state test including anxiety, depression, and hostility (Multiple Affect Adjective Check List). Later, positive affect scales were added.Toward the end of his years at the institute, the first reports of the effects of sensory deprivation appeared and he began his own experiments in this field. These experiments, supported by grants from NIMH, occupied him for the next 10 years during his time at Brooklyn College, Adelphi University, and the research labs at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. This last job was his second interdisciplinary experience working in close collaboration with Harold Persky who added measures of hormonal changes to the sensory deprivation experiments. He collaborated with Persky in studies of hormonal changes during experimentally (hypnotically) induced emotions.During his time at Einstein, he established relationships with other principal investigators in the area of sensory deprivation and they collaborated on the book Sensory Deprivation: 15 years of research edited by John Zubek (1969). His chapter on theoretical constructs contained the idea of using individual differences in optimal levels of stimulation and arousal as an explanation for some of the variations in response to sensory deprivation. The first sensation seeking scale (SSS) had been developed in the early 1960's based on these constructs.At the time of his move to the University of Delaware in 1969, he turned his full attention to the SSS as the operational measure of the optimal level constructs. This was the time of the drug and sexual revolutions on and off campuses and research relating experience in these areas to the basic trait paid off and is continuing to this day in many laboratories. Two books have been written on this topic: Sensation Seeking: Beyond the Optimal Level of Arousal, 1979; Behavioral Expressions and Biosocial Bases of Sensation Seeking, 1994. Research on sensation seeking in America and countries around the world continues at an unabated level of journal articles, several hundred appearing since the 1994 book on the subject.The theoretical model of sensation seeking changed as a consequence of research on the biological correlates of sensation seeking which included biochemical as well as psychophysiological variables. Genetic studies also indicated that sensation seeking was a major trait with a strong genetic/ biological basis. Zuckerman and his colleagues conducted research on the psychophysiological correlates of sensation seeking. One of these areas, augmenting/reducing of the cortical evoked potential, has provided a well replicated model of brain functioning in high and low sensation seekers, and Siegel has extended this into a model for sensation seeking in cats and rats. This animal model provides a link between sensation seeking and behavioral, genetic, physiological, and biochemical bases for the trait in other species. Investigators at other universities, Bardo at the University of Kentucky and LeMoal and Simon at the University of Bordeaux, have used the sensation seeking model to investigate the psychobiological basis of novelty seeking in rats.Zuckerman's interest in the biological basis of the trait of sensation seeking broadened into a more general interest in the biological bases of personality, culminating in his book: Psychobiology of Personality, 1991 and many book chapters and articles on the subject. His perspective in the area was broadened by sabbaticals spent with leaders in the field in England: Hans Eysenck, Jeffrey Gray, and Robert Plomin.More recent research attempted to place sensation seeking within the context of new structural models for personality traits. Factor analytic studies showed that a combined factor of impulsivity and sensation seeking formed one of five, robust and replicable factors of personality. Research on this new measure of the basic trait is ongoing.

  • Brain Literacy for Educators and Psychologists

    • 1st Edition
    • Virginia W. Berninger + 1 more
    • English
    Although educators are expected to bring about functional changes in the brain--the organ of human learning--they are given no formal training in the structure, function or development of the brain in formal or atypically developing children as part of their education. This book is organized around three conceptual themes: First, the interplay between nature (genetics) and nurture (experience and environment) is emphasized. Second, the functional systems of the brain are explained in terms of how they lead to reading, writing and mathematics and the design of instruction. Thirdly, research is presented, not as a finished product, but as a step forward within the field of educational neuropsychology. The book differs from neuropsychology and neuroscience books in that it is aimed at practitioners, focuses on high incidence neuropsychological conditions seen in the classroom, and is the only book that integrates both brain research with the practice of effective literacy, and mathematics instruction of the general and special education school-aged populations.

  • Tutorials in Event Related Potential Research: Endogenous Components

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 10
    • W. Ritter + 1 more
    • English
    From the human brain, event related potentials (ERPs) can be obtained which reflect psychological information processing. This book summarizes the theoretical and methodological aspects of research on the so-called ``endogenous'' components of the ERP. These components are invoked by psychological processing rather than evoked by the mere presentations of external stimuli.

  • Time and Behaviour

    Psychological and Neurobehavioural Analyses
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 120
    • C.M. Bradshaw + 1 more
    • English
    That time is both a dimension of behaviour and a ubiquitous controlling variable in the lives of all living things has been well recognized for many years.The last decade has seen a burgeoning of interest in the quantitative analysis of timing behaviour, and progress during the last five or six years has been particularly impressive, with the publication of several major new theoretical contributions.There has also been considerable progress in behavioural methodology during the past decade. In the area of reinforcement schedules, for example, the venerable interresponse–time schedule, fixed–interval peak procedure and interval bisection task have been complemented by a 'second generation' of incisive instruments for analyzing timing behaviour.Another area of recent development is the analysis of the neurobiological substrate of timing behaviour. Several research groups are currently studying the involvement of various central neurotransmitter systems in the timing behaviour, and the ability of centrally acting drugs and discrete brain lesions to alter timing processes. Yet another recent development in timing research is the growing dialogue between two fields that have grown up separately, although, superficially at least, they seem to have much in common: the experimental analysis of 'interval timing', traditionally the province of experimental psychology, and behavioural chronobiology. The last few years have seen a growing interest in the comparative properties of the internal 'clocks' that regulate biobehavioural rhythms with time bases in the circadian range or longer, and those that are entailed in timing of intervals in the range of seconds or minutes.All these areas of research, and others, are represented in the chapters that make up this volume. This book will help to promote further interactions among researchers who hail from disparate disciplines, but who share a common interest in the temporal properties of behaviour.