Behavioral Neuroscience

Broca's region has been in the news ever since scientists realized that particular cognitive functions could be localized to parts of the cerebral cortex. Its discoverer, Paul Broca, was one of the first researchers to argue for a direct connection between a concrete behavior—in this case, the use of language—and a specific cortical region. Today, Broca's region is perhaps the most famous part of the human brain, and for over a century, has persisted as the focus of intense research and numerous debates. The name has even penetrated mainstream culture through popular science and the theater. Broca's region is famous for a good reason: As language is one of the most distinctive human traits, the cognitive mechanisms that support it and the tissues in which these mechanisms are housed are also quite complex, and so have the potential to reveal a lot not only about how words, phrases, sentences, and grammatical rules are instantiated in neural tissue, but also, and more broadly, about how brain function relates to behavior. Paul Broca's discoveries were an important, driving force behind the more general effort to relate complex behavior to particular parts of the cerebral cortex, which, significantly, produced the first brain maps.

A well-known example of filling-in involves the blind spot, a region in the back of the eye that is devoid of photoreceptors. The term blind spot is somewhat of a misnomer, because the corresponding region of visual space is not simply perceived as dark, as one would expect. Instead, it is “filled-in” with the same color and texture as the surrounding background. This phenomenon is often considered as little more than a curiosity. However, this book argues that completion mechanisms similar to those that fill in the blind spot are pervasive and necessary for normal perception. The book reviews evidence suggesting a link between particular neural processes and the perception of filling-in. It then introduces the idea that these processes can instigate various types of long-term neural plasticity, which may underlie recovery and rehabilitation after peripheral injury, as well as other types of skill learning. The connection between completion phenomena and long-term plasticity is explored not only in the visual system, but also in the auditory, somatosensory, and motor systems.

The study of conscious experience has seen remarkable strides in the last ten years, reflecting important technological breakthroughs and the enormous efforts of researchers. Although still embroiled in debate, scientists are now beginning to find common ground in their understanding of consciousness, which may pave the way for a unified explanation of how and why we experience and understand the world around us. This book brings the subject to life with a metaphor that has been used to understand consciousness since the time of Aristotle—the mind as theater. Here consciousness is seen as a “stage” on which our sensations, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings play to a vast, silent audience (the immensely complicated inner-workings of the brain's unconscious processes). Behind the scenes, silent context operators shape conscious experience; they include implicit expectations, self systems, and scene setters. Using this framework, the book presents compelling evidence that human consciousness rides on top of biologically ancient mechanisms. In humans it manifests itself in inner speech, imagery, perception, and voluntary control of thought and action. Topics like hypnosis, absorbed states of mind, adaptation to trauma, and the human propensity to project expectations on uncertainty, all fit into the expanded theater metaphor.

This book offers a fundamental new theory of motor cortex organization: the rendering of the movement repertoire onto the cortex. The action repertoire of an animal is highly dimensional, whereas the cortical sheet is two-dimensional. Rendering the action space onto the cortex therefore results in a complex pattern, explaining the otherwise inexplicable details of motor cortex organization. This book includes a complete history of motor cortex research from its discovery to the present, a discussion of the major issues in motor cortex research, and an account of recent experiments that led to the book's “action map” view. Though focused on motor cortex, the book includes a range of topics from an explanation of how primates put food in their mouths, to the origins of social behavior such as smiling and laughing, to the mysterious link between movement disorders and autism.

Reading is a unique human skill, and modern societies rely extensively on literacy skills. Reading disability can therefore have a profound personal, economic, and social impact. However, the scientific understanding of the neural basis of reading in the normal brain is underdeveloped. A better understanding of normal reading processes could help individuals with developmental dyslexia and those with reading disabilities gained through injury or disease. Neuroimaging offers a unique window on reading and has allowed us to reach interesting insights about the neural correlates of reading in health and disease. It has also raised questions for scientific debate. The whole field of reading research is very much a dynamic and growing one. This book provides some seasoned insights and to offer a window into various conceptual and technical issues that continue to be discussed and developed.

Neuroergonomics can be defined as the study of brain and behavior at work. It combines two disciplines: neuroscience, the study of brain structure and function; and ergonomics, the study of how to match technology with the capabilities and limitations of people so they can work effectively and safely. The goal of merging these two fields is to use the startling discoveries of human brain and physiological functioning both to inform the design of technologies in the workplace and home, and to provide new training methods that enhance performance, expand capabilities, and optimize the fit between people and technology. Research in the area of neuroergonomics has blossomed in recent years with the emergence of non-invasive techniques for monitoring human brain function that can be used to study various aspects of human behavior in relation to technology and work, including mental workload, visual attention, working memory, motor control, human-automation interaction, and adaptive automation. This book provides an overview of this emerging area, describing the theoretical background, basic research, major methods, as well as the new and future areas of application.

This book proposes a novel view to explain how we as humans—contrary to current robots—can have the impression of consciously feeling things: for example the red of a sunset, the smell of a rose, the sound of a symphony, or a pain. The book starts off by looking at visual perception. Our ability to see turns out to be much more mysterious than one might think. The eye contains many defects which should seriously interfere with vision. Yet we have the impression of seeing the world in glorious panavision and technicolor. Explaining how this can be the case leads to a new idea about what seeing really is. Seeing is not passively receiving information in the brain, but rather a way of interacting with the world. The role of the brain is not to create visual sensation, but to enable the necessary interactions with the world. This new approach to seeing is extended in the second part of the book to encompass the other senses: hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Taking sensory experiences to be modes of interacting with the world explains why these experiences are different in the way they are. It also explains why thoughts or automatic functions in the body, and indeed the vast majority brain functions, are not accompanied by any real feeling. The “sensorimotor” approach is not simply a philosophical argument: It leads to scientifically verifiable predictions and new research directions. Among these are the phenomena of change blindness, sensory substitution, “looked but failed to see”, as well as results on color naming and color perception and the localization of touch on the body.