books on the mind, consciousness, cognitive science…
October 15, 2012
free kindle ebook, offer ends tonight: ‘Happiness Rehab: 8 Creative Steps to A More Joyful Life’amazon.com/gp/product/B00… via @amazon
— Debbie A Foster (@mymindonbooks) October 15, 2012
Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning by Benjamin K. Bergen (Basic Books, 2012)
(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk – 15 Nov 2012)
Book description from the publisher:
Whether it’s brusque, convincing, fraught with emotion, or dripping with innuendo, language is fundamentally a tool for conveying meaning—a uniquely human magic trick in which you vibrate your vocal cords to make your innermost thoughts pop up in someone else’s mind. You can use it to talk about all sorts of things—from your new labradoodle puppy to the expansive gardens at Versailles, from Roger Federer’s backhand to things that don’t exist at all, like flying pigs. And when you talk, your listener fills in lots of details you didn’t mention—the curliness of the dog’s fur or the vast statuary on the grounds of the French palace. What’s the trick behind this magic? How does meaning work?
In Louder than Words, cognitive scientist Benjamin Bergen draws together a decade’s worth of research in psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to offer a new theory of how our minds make meaning. When we hear words and sentences, Bergen contends, we engage the parts of our brain that we use for perception and action, repurposing these evolutionarily older networks to create simulations in our minds. These embodied simulations, as they’re called, are what makes it possible for us to become better baseball players by merely visualizing a well-executed swing; what allows us to remember which cupboard the diapers are in without looking, and what makes it so hard to talk on a cell phone while we’re driving on the highway. Meaning is more than just knowing definitions of words, as others have previously argued. In understanding language, our brains engage in a creative process of constructing rich mental worlds in which we see, hear, feel, and act.
Through whimsical examples and ingenious experiments, Bergen leads us on a virtual tour of the new science of embodied cognition. A brilliant account of our human capacity to understand language, Louder than Words will profoundly change how you read, speak, and listen.
Google Books preview:
See also: Author’s webpage
October 13, 2012
Embodied Acting: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Performance by Rick Kemp (Routledge, 2012)
Book description from the publisher:
‘A focus on the body, its actions, and its cognitive mechanisms identifies … foundational principles of activity that link the three elements of theatre; Story, Space, and Time. The three meet in, are defined by, and expressed through the actor’s body.’ – from the Introduction
Embodied Acting is an essential, pragmatic intervention in the study of how recent discoveries within cognitive science can – and should – be applied to performance. For too long, a conceptual separation of mind and body has dominated actor training in the West. Cognitive science has shown this binary to be illusory, shattering the traditional boundaries between mind and body, reason and emotion, knowledge and imagination. This revolutionary new volume explores the impact that a more holistic approach to the “bodymind” can have on the acting process.
Drawing on his experience as an actor, director and scholar, Rick Kemp interrogates the key cognitive activities involved in performance, including:
- non-verbal communication
- the relationship between thought, speech, and gesture
- the relationship between self and character
- empathy, imagination, and emotion.
New perspectives on the work of Stanislavski, Michael Chekhov, and Jacques Lecoq – as well as contemporary practitioners including Daniel Day-Lewis and Katie Mitchell – are explored through practical exercises and accessible explanations. Blending theory, practice, and cutting-edge neuroscience, Kemp presents a radical re-examination of the unconscious activities engaged in creating, and presenting, a role.
Google Books preview:
October 11, 2012
Mind Over Mind: The Surprising Power of Expectations by Chris Berdik (Current)
Book description from the publisher:
“Our brains can’t help but look forward. We spend very little of our mental lives completely in the here and now. Indeed, the power of expectations is so pervasive that we may notice only when somebody pulls back the curtain to reveal a few of the cogs and levers responsible for the big show.”
We all know expectations matter—in school, in sports, in the stock market. From a healing placebo to a run on the bank, hints of their self-fulfilling potential have been observed for years. But now researchers in fields ranging from medicine to education to criminal justice are moving beyond observation to investigate exactly how expectations work—and when they don’t.
In Mind Over Mind, journalist Chris Berdik offers a captivating look at the frontiers of expectations research, revealing how our brains work in the future tense and how our assumptions—about the next few milliseconds or the next few years—bend reality. We learn how placebo calories can fill us up, why wine judges can’t agree, how fake surgery can sometimes work better than real surgery, and how imaginary power can be corrupting. We meet scientists who have found that wearing taller and more attractive avatars in a virtual world boosts confidence in real life, gambling addicts whose brains make losing feel like winning, and coaches who put blurry glasses on athletes to lift them out of slumps.
Along the way, Berdik probes the paradox of expectations. Their influence seems based on illusion, even trickery, but they can create their own reality, for good or for ill.
Expectations can heal our bodies and make us stronger, smarter, and more successful, or they can leave us in agony, crush our spirit, and undermine our free will. If we can unlock their secrets, we may be able to harness their power and sidestep their pitfalls.
Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, history, and fascinating true stories of expectations in action, Mind Over Mind offers a spirited journey into one of the most exciting areas of brain research today.
See also: Author’s website
October 4, 2012
Inviting a Monkey to Tea: Befriending Your Mind and Discovering Lasting Contentment by Nancy Colier (Hohm Press, 2012)
Book description from the publisher:
To “invite a monkey to tea” is to befriend your own mind—which is often compared to a drunken monkey for all its mad twists and turns. A wild monkey is full of irrepressible desires, and thus chases its own tail in its search for happiness! This book is about learning to welcome the mind as an ally without fear or resistance, thus relaxing that frantic search, discovering genuine contentment and resting in the joy of who you are.
As a psychotherapist, author Nancy Colier has accompanied hundreds of people in their “search for happiness” for nearly two decades. She has watched her clients try everything under the sun to be—and stay—happy. Witnessing and participating in this process, she has become an expert in happiness, or more specifically, in the monkeymind’s search and demand for it, and the unhappiness that all the striving ultimately creates. Along the way, the author has come to understand the workings of the mind—both from her clients and by her own diligent practice of meditation and self-observation. This book distills the wisdom and experience of her dedicated work, and offers readers a roadmap of the territory of mind, plus a toolbox of practical means for identifying and working gently with the unrealistic expectations that keep us from the enjoyment of who we are.
See also: Author’s website
