San Antonio College Library

In "Do I Need You?" Dr. David Eagleman explores how the human brain relies on other brains to thrive and survive. This neural interdependence begins at birth. Dr. Eagleman invites a group of babies to a puppet show to showcase their ability to discern who is trustworthy, and who isn't. Brain scans reveal that when we see someone in pain, we feel it too. Circuits within the brain's pain matrix light up in both cases. And this is the basis of empathy....

"Uniting Thomas Lawson's essays on the cognitive science of religion, this volume explores theoretical issues in the study of cultural phenomena such as religion, the role of imagination, and the experiments that emerge from these theories. The book begins with Lawson's influential essay 'Towards a Cognitive Science of Religion,' which was the first to employ the phrase, and has since become widely adopted in many different disciplines. It signals...

"In Brain, Mind, and the Structure of Reality, Paul Nunez discusses the possibility of deep connections between relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and consciousness: all entities involved with fundamental information barriers. Dr. Nunez elaborates on possible new links in this nested web of human knowledge that may tell us something new about the nature and origins of consciousness. In the end, does the brain create the mind? Or is the...

A provocative study on the mental abilities of the aging brain challenges beliefs about the mind's tendency to decline with age, explaining how older people have greater capacities for making intuitive and wisdom-based decisions, and citing recent and historical examples of individuals who achieved their greatest successes in their later years.

Adults who want to learn a foreign language are often discouraged because they believe they cannot acquire a language as easily as children. Once they begin to learn a language, adults may be further discouraged when they find the methods used to teach children don't seem to work for them. What is an adult language learner to do? In this book, Richard Roberts and Roger Kreuz draw on insights from psychology and cognitive science to show that adults...

In "Who Will We Be?" Dr. Eagleman journeys into the future, and asks what's next for the human brain, and for our species. Mother nature has evolved a brain that is able to rewire itself according to its environment, which means that as technological advances continue apace, our technology is on a crash course with our biology. Dr. Eagleman describes ways in which we'll be able to plug new sensory inputs into our brains, to perceive more of physical...

A powerful orthodoxy in the study of the brain has taken hold in recent years: Since physical laws govern the physical world and our own brains are part of that world, physical laws therefore govern our behavior and even our conscious selves. Free will is meaningless, goes the mantra; we live in a "determined" world. Not so, argues the renowned neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga in this thoughtful, provocative book based on his Gifford Lectures----one...

"Establishing a Leadership Mindset provides a more natural approach to obtaining buy-in for constant growth by harnessing the power of strategies proven by cognitive science and brain physiology. By fostering greater purpose and passion in the intentional efforts of educators, the goal is to achieve leadership throughout the team or organization"--

Despite everything that has been written about the brain, a very important part of this vital organ has been overlooked in most books until now. This book is the story of glia, which make up approximately 85 percent of the cells in the brain. Long neglected as little more than cerebral packing material ("glia" means glue), glia are sparking a revolution in brain science. Glia are completely different from neurons, the brain cells that we are familiar...

Shermer demonstrates how our brains selectively assess data in an attempt to confirm the conclusions (beliefs) we've already reached. Drawing on evolution, cognitive science, and neuroscience, he considers not only supernatural beliefs but political and economic ones as well.