Biological Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology is a uniquely accessible yet comprehensive guide to the study of the effects of evolutionary theory on human behaviour. Written specifically for the general listener and for entry-level students, it covers all the most important elements of this interdisciplinary subject, from the role of evolution in our selection of partner, to the influence of genetics on parenting. This audiobook draws widely on examples, case studies and background facts to convey a substantial amount of information.

Have you ever wondered why you have a brain? Let renowned neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett demystify that big gray blob between your ears. In seven short essays (plus a bite-sized story about how brains evolved), this slim, entertaining, and accessible collection reveals mind-expanding lessons from the front lines of neuroscience research. You'll learn where brains came from, how they're structured (and why it matters), and how yours works in tandem with other brains to create everything you experience.

Are men literally born to cheat? Does monogamy actually serve women's interests? These are among the questions that have made The Moral Animal one of the most provocative science books in recent years. Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics - as well as their implications for our moral codes and public policies.

Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally. How can it be possible that the world we see is not objective reality? And how can our senses be useful if they are not communicating the truth? Hoffman grapples with these questions and more over the course of this eye-opening work.

Propositions about artificial intelligence are being debated seriously in the 21st Century, but machines, unlike plants, are not even living organisms. So, are plants sentient beings, like humans? Do they feel? Can they communicate? Plant sentience is a subject that has intrigued mankind over the ages—from the ancient Greeks, Plato and Aristotle, through to modern day philosophers and psychologists. In this extraordinary book, Australia's Dr Terence McMullen presents an engaging, systematic and thorough study of plant psychology.

Does your dog get sad when you leave for the day? Does your cat purr because she loves you? Do bears attack when they’re angry? You can’t very well ask them. In fact, scientists haven’t been able to reach a consensus on whether animals even have emotions like humans do, let alone how to study them. Yet studies of animal emotion are critical for understanding human emotion and mental illness. In The Nature of the Beast, pioneering neuroscientist David J. Anderson describes a new approach to solving this problem.

How did humans, a species of self-centered apes, come to care about others? Since Darwin, scientists have tried to answer this question using evolutionary theory. In The Kindness of Strangers, psychologist Michael E. McCullough shows why they have failed and offers a new explanation instead. From the moment nomadic humans first settled down until the aftermath of the Second World War, our species has confronted repeated crises that we could only survive by changing our behavior.

In The Brain in Context, the bioethicist Jonathan D. Moreno and the neuroscientist Jay Schulkin provide an accessible and thought-provoking account of the evolution of neuroscience and the neuroscience of evolution. They emphasize that the brain is not an isolated organ - it extends into every part of the body and every aspect of human life. Understanding the brain requires studying the environmental, biological, chemical, genetic, and social factors that continue to shape it.

Профессор Дэвид Линден собрал ответы тридцати девяти ведущих нейробиологов на вопрос: «Что бы вы больше всего хотели рассказать людям о работе мозга?» В нем специалисты по человеческому поведению, молекулярной генетике, эволюционной биологии и сравнительной анатомии освещают самые разные темы. Авторы описывают самые удивительные особенности мозга, честно объясняя, что известно, а что пока неизвестно ученым о работе нервной системы.

Consciousness is more than mere awareness. It’s how we experience the world, how we turn input into experience. Once the province of philosophy, religion, or perhaps fantasy, neuroscientists have added a scientific voice to the discussion, using available medical technology to explore just what separates so-called “mind” from brain. In this audiobook, we look at what science has to say about one of humankind’s most fundamental, existential mysteries.

A pioneering neuroscientist argues that we are more than our brains To many, the brain is the seat of personal identity and autonomy. But the way we talk about the brain is often rooted more in mystical conceptions of the soul than in scientific fact. This blinds us to the physical realities of...

Nicolelis undertakes the first attempt to explain the entirety of human history, culture, and civilization based on a series of recently uncovered key principles of brain function. This new cosmology is centered around three fundamental properties of the human brain: its insurmountable malleability to adapt and learn; its exquisite ability to allow multiple individuals to synchronize their minds around a task, goal, or belief; and its incomparable capacity for abstraction.

In this revealing romp through the mysteries of human perception, University of California psychologist and researcher Lawrence Rosenblum explores the astonishing abilities of the five senses - skills of which most of us are remarkably unaware. Drawing on groundbreaking insights into the brain's plasticity and integrative powers, including findings from his own research, Rosenblum examines how our brains use the subtlest information to perceive the world.

Depuis l'apparition d'homo sapiens et la révolution cognitive il y a 50 000 ans, les capacités de notre espèce à comprendre et modifier son environnement paraissent sans limites. Un seul mystère reste inviolé : celui de la nature humaine et de sa civilisation. Ce que nous sommes vraiment, pourquoi notre espèce fait ce qu'elle fait, défie toute explication rationnelle.

“There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature.” Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book. Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, Boyer offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles.

Between what can be learned from evolutionary psychology and cognitive science a picture emerges. In Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life, social psychologist Douglas Kenrick fuses these two fields to create a coherent story of human nature. In his analysis, many ingrained, apparently irrational behaviors—one-night stands, prejudice, conspicuous consumption, even art and religious devotion—are quite explicable and (when desired) avoidable.

In Best of the Brain, top neuroscientist Floyd E. Bloom has selected the most fascinating brain-related articles from Scientific American and Scientific American Mind since 1999. Bloom garnishes the impressive lineup with his own introduction. The articles are grouped in three sections: "Mind", "Matter", and "Tomorrow's Brain".

It has been remarked that if the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn’t. Commencing with a brief history of neuroscience, from the ancient practice of drilling holes in the head to relieve headaches to the latest results from MRI and CT scans, this accessible guide sets out to explore exactly what we do know about the brain. Including the most up-to-date research on the cerebral processes, this entertaining introduction assumes no previous scientific knowledge.

In the 1970s, the behavioral psychologist Herbert S. Terrace led a remarkable experiment to see if a chimpanzee could be taught to use language. A young ape, named “Nim Chimpsky” in a nod to the linguist whose theories Terrace challenged, was raised by a family in New York and instructed in American Sign Language. Initially, Terrace thought that Nim could create sentences but later discovered that Nim’s teachers inadvertently cued his signing. Terrace concluded that Project Nim failed - not because Nim couldn’t create sentences but because he couldn’t even learn words.

We humans tend to think that we are unique in our intelligence, social skill, and depth of emotion, but we think too much of ourselves. The animal kingdom teems with hidden stories of the weird and fascinating, and in Amazing Animals, we gather recent research on animal behavior, including surprising discoveries of how animals think and feel, from man’s best friend to some of the earth’s oddest creatures.