Screen LibraryA brain for innovation : the neuroscience of imagination and abstract thinking /
"What makes humans innovative? Numerous factors, presumably, but a critical element would be their capacity for unbounded imagination using high-level abstract concepts. This book introduces and examines recent advances in neuroscience regarding neural mechanisms of imagination and high-level a...
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Published: |
Columbia University Press,
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| Publisher Address: | New York, NY : |
| Publication Dates: | [2024] |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | |
| Summary: |
"What makes humans innovative? Numerous factors, presumably, but a critical element would be their capacity for unbounded imagination using high-level abstract concepts. This book introduces and examines recent advances in neuroscience regarding neural mechanisms of imagination and high-level abstraction under the premise that humans are innovative because they can imagine freely using high-level abstract concepts. This book will delve into modern neuroscientific research by examining various discoveries that have provided important insights into the neural mechanisms underlying imagination and high-level abstraction. In this book, Min W. Jung will argue that the imagination function of the hippocampus has evolved in mammals, but not in birds, because of the unique ecological demands of ground-navigating animals, namely the ability to navigate along the optimal spatial trajectory between two arbitrary locations in a given environment. In other words, imagination is a function shared by all mammals. However, humans surpass all other animals in high-level abstraction, which makes them particularly innovative. This book will highlight related work in psychology, anthropology, artificial intelligence, and philosophy. Jung will try to explain a unique faculty of Homo sapiens , namely the capacity for innovation, in terms of the organization and functioning of neural systems and circuits. Finally, he will also discuss how this capacity may have evolved and the implications of this evolution"-- |
| Carrier Form: | vi, 226 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages [197]-215) and index. |
| ISBN: |
9780231213363 0231213360 |
| Index Number: | QP360 |
| CLC: | R338.2 |
| Call Number: | R338.2/J952 |
| Contents: | Introduction -- Part I: Hippocampus and Imagination. Hippocampus : from memory to imagination -- False memory -- Place cells and hippocampal replay -- Part II: The Neural Symphony of Imagination. Neural circuits of the hippocampus -- Value-based decision making -- Remembering rewarding futures -- The evolution of imagination -- Part III: The Neural Foundation of Abstraction. Abstract thinking and neocortex -- Prefrontal cortex -- The human revolution and associated brain changes -- Deep neural network -- Part IV: Beyond Imagination and Abstraction. Sharing ideas and knowledge through language -- On creativity -- The future of innovation -- Epilogue -- Appendix I: Denate Gyrus -- Appendix 2: Value-coding Neurons -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index. |