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Experts explore the maturation of nonlinear brain dynamics from a developmental perspective and consider the relationship of neurodevelopmental disorders to early disruption in dynamic coordination.

Brain --- Central nervous system. --- Neuroplasticity. --- Growth. --- NEUROSCIENCE/General --- COGNITIVE SCIENCES/Cognitive Neuroscience

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A novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that extends and deepens enactive theory, bridging the gap between sensorimotor skills and language. Linguistic Bodies offers a fully embodied and fully social treatment of human language without positing mental representations. The authors present the first coherent, overarching theory that connects dynamical explanations of action and perception with language. Arguing from the assumption of a deep continuity between life and mind, they show that this continuity extends to language. Expanding and deepening enactive theory, they offer a constitutive account of language and the co-emergent phenomena of personhood, reflexivity, social normativity, and ideality. Language, they argue, is not something we add to a range of existing cognitive capacities but a new way of being embodied. Each of us is a linguistic body in a community of other linguistic bodies. The book describes three distinct yet entangled kinds of human embodiment, organic, sensorimotor, and intersubjective; it traces the emergence of linguistic sensitivities and introduces the novel concept of linguistic bodies; and it explores the implications of living as linguistic bodies in perpetual becoming, applying the concept of linguistic bodies to questions of language acquisition, parenting, autism, grammar, symbol, narrative, and gesture, and to such ethical concerns as microaggression, institutional speech, and pedagogy.

Language and languages --- Language and languages. --- Philosophy. --- COGNITIVE SCIENCES/General --- LINGUISTICS & LANGUAGE/General --- Foreign languages --- Languages --- Anthropology --- Communication --- Ethnology --- Information theory --- Meaning (Psychology) --- Philology --- Linguistics

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An argument that the meaning of written or auditory linguistic signals is not derived from the input but results from the brain's internal construction process. When we read a text or listen to speech, meaning seems to be given to us instantaneously, as if it were part of the input. In Meaning in the Brain, Giosue Baggio explains that this is an illusion created by the tremendous speed at which sensory systems and systems for meaning and grammar operate in the brain. Meaning, Baggio argues, is not derived from input but results from the brain's internal construction process. With this book, Baggio offers the first integrated, multilevel theory of semantics in the brain, describing how meaning is generated during language comprehension, production, and acquisition. Baggio's theory draws on recent advances in formal semantics and pragmatics, including vector-space semantics, discourse representation theory, and signaling game theory. It is designed to explain a growing body of experimental results on semantic processing that have accumulated in the absence of a unifying theory since the introduction of electrophysiology and neuroimaging methods. Baggio argues that there is evidence for the existence of three semantic systems in the brain -- relational semantics, interpretive semantics, and evolutionary semantics -- and he discusses each in turn, developing neural theories of meaning for all three. Moreover, in the course of his argument, Baggio addresses several long-standing issues in the neuroscience of language, including the role of compositionality as a principle of meaning construction in the brain, the role of sensory-motor processes in language comprehension, and the neural and evolutionary links among meaning, consciousness, sociality, and action.

Lexicology. Semantics --- Psycholinguistics --- Meaning (Psychology) --- Semantics. --- Psycholinguistics. --- COGNITIVE SCIENCES/General --- LINGUISTICS & LANGUAGE/General --- Language, Psychology of --- Language and languages --- Psychology of language --- Speech --- Linguistics --- Psychology --- Thought and thinking --- Formal semantics --- Semasiology --- Semiology (Semantics) --- Comparative linguistics --- Information theory --- Lexicology --- Psychological aspects

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An argument that qualitative representations -- symbolic representations that carve continuous phenomena into meaningful units -- are central to human cognition. In this book, Kenneth Forbus proposes that qualitative representations hold the key to one of the deepest mysteries of cognitive science: how we reason and learn about the continuous phenomena surrounding us. Forbus argues that qualitative representations -- symbolic representations that carve continuous phenomena into meaningful units -- are central to human cognition. Qualitative representations provide a basis for commonsense reasoning, because they enable practical reasoning with very little data; this makes qualitative representations a useful component of natural language semantics. Qualitative representations also provide a foundation for expert reasoning in science and engineering by making explicit the broad categories of things that might happen and enabling causal models that help guide the application of more quantitative knowledge as needed. Qualitative representations are important for creating more human-like artificial intelligence systems with capabilities for spatial reasoning, vision, question answering, and understanding natural language. Forbus discusses, among other topics, basic ideas of knowledge representation and reasoning; qualitative process theory; qualitative simulation and reasoning about change; compositional modeling; qualitative spatial reasoning; and learning and conceptual change. His argument is notable both for presenting an approach to qualitative reasoning in which analogical reasoning and learning play crucial roles and for marshaling a wide variety of evidence, including the performance of AI systems. Cognitive scientists will find Forbus's account of qualitative representations illuminating; AI scientists will value Forbus's new approach to qualitative representations and the overview he offers.

Cognitive psychology --- Cognition. --- Reasoning. --- Space perception. --- COGNITIVE SCIENCES/General --- COMPUTER SCIENCE/General --- Spatial perception --- Perception --- Spatial behavior --- Figure-ground perception --- Geographical perception --- Argumentation --- Ratiocination --- Reason --- Thought and thinking --- Judgment (Logic) --- Logic --- Psychology

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An argument for a Copernican revolution in our consideration of mental features -- a shift in which the world-brain problem supersedes the mind-body problem. Philosophers have long debated the mind-body problem -- whether to attribute such mental features as consciousness to mind or to body. Meanwhile, neuroscientists search for empirical answers, seeking neural correlates for consciousness, self, and free will. In this book, Georg Northoff does not propose new solutions to the mind-body problem; instead, he questions the problem itself, arguing that it is an empirically, ontologically, and conceptually implausible way to address the existence and reality of mental features. We are better off, he contends, by addressing consciousness and other mental features in terms of the relationship between world and brain; philosophers should consider the world-brain problem rather than the mind-body problem . This calls for a Copernican shift in vantage point -- from within the mind or brain to beyond the brain -- in our consideration of mental features. Northoff, a neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and philosopher, explains that empirical evidence suggests that the brain's spontaneous activity and its spatiotemporal structure are central to aligning and integrating the brain within the world. This spatiotemporal structure allows the brain to extend beyond itself into body and world, creating the "world-brain relation" that is central to mental features. Northoff makes his argument in empirical, ontological, and epistemic-methodological terms. He discusses current models of the brain and applies these models to recent data on neuronal features underlying consciousness and proposes the world-brain relation as the ontological predisposition for consciousness.

Brain --- Mind and body. --- Neurosciences --- Physiology. --- Philosophy. --- Cognitive psychology --- Physiology of nerves and sense organs --- COGNITIVE SCIENCES/General --- PHILOSOPHY/Philosophy of Mind/General --- Body and mind --- Body and soul (Philosophy) --- Human body --- Mind --- Mind-body connection --- Mind-body relations --- Mind-cure --- Somatopsychics --- Dualism --- Philosophical anthropology --- Holistic medicine --- Mental healing --- Parousia (Philosophy) --- Phrenology --- Psychophysiology --- Self --- Psychological aspects