Ayant constate que depuis 20 ans l'interet s'est deplace du mouvement vers l'action, des chercheurs en neurosciences, sciences cognitives et philosophie ont confronte les progres experimentaux aux analyses philosophiques. Ils ont reconnu l'originalite des nouvelles neurosciences cognitives dans le fait qu'elles ne se contentent plus de degager les correlats neuraux de la cognition, mais qu'elles reposent le probleme classique de l'union de l'esprit et du corps en apportant une masse de donnees sur le role de l'action dans la constitution de (...) l'agent lui-meme, comme dans celle - correlative - du monde environnant. Reactivant les intuitions de la phenomenologie sur l'enracinement corporel de l'intentionnalite, l'interpretation de ces donnees va obliger la philosophie analytique a briser sa cloture linguistique. (shrink)

Les neurosciences sont utilisées en économie dans l’objectif d’améliorer la compréhension et la description des choix individuels. Elles permettent aussi d’évaluer la rationalité des décideurs et de réguler les comportements. Cet article analyse les implications normatives de la neuroéconomie, en dégageant les apports des neurosciences à l’économie du bien-être et à l’économie publique. L’interventionnisme économique défendu par les neuroéconomistes (par exemple, Bernheim et Rangel 2004) y est interprété comme une politique caractéristique du néo-libéralisme, au sens qu’en donne Michel Foucault (1978b). (...) Si la neuroimagerie ne permet pas de « manipuler » directement le cerveau des décideurs, elle offre en revanche la possibilité de détecter le caractère pathologique ou irrationnel de certaines conduites. Ce diagnostic justifie une régulation comportementale du bien-être, qui doit être distinguée du paternalisme libertarien de Sunstein et Thaler (2003). Dans les deux cas, c’est l’environnement plutôt que le décideur lui-même qui est la cible de l’intervention, mais la justification théorique n’est pas la même. Pour les neuroéconomistes, l’irrationalité d’un comportement tel que l’addiction ne résulte pas d’un biais cognitif de l’individu, mais de son interaction avec un environnement pathologique. Les réflexions normatives des neuroéconomistes s’inscrivent dans le prolongement théorique des réflexions de Michel Foucault sur la biopolitique et le néolibéralisme (Foucault 2004b). Notre étude vaut ainsi comme une contribution à l’étude de la gouvernementalité. Elle nous conduit à défendre une interprétation non-réductionniste des rapports entre savoir et pouvoir chez Foucault. Classification JEL : D87, H10, B41. (shrink)

The article began life as, and retains the character of, spoken argument for not allowing the neurosciences to shape the agenda of the history of the human sciences. This argument is then used to suggest purposes and content for the journal, History of the Human Sciences. The style is rhetorical, even polemical, but open-ended. I challenge two clichés about the neurosciences, that they intellectually challenge other areas of knowledge, and that they are reconfiguring the human with the notion of ‘brainhood’. (...) The suggestion is that the real challenges lie elsewhere; specifically with understanding the relations of different forms of knowledge and making it conceivable by political action, or simply mode of life, to implement one way of being human rather than another. The conclusion re-asserts the value of the heading, ‘history of the human sciences’, and of the value of the journal with this name, as a forum in which to reflect on the identity and relations of forms of knowledge about ‘the human’ in all their variety. (shrink)

Morality, ethics, and the law : an overview of the foundations of contemporary clinical ethical analysis -- Case studies : ethical and legal challenges in the care of the neurologically injured critically ill patient -- Civil law and liability : the law of medical malpractice -- Legal reasoning, legal process, legal proof, and why it is confusing to clinician scientists -- Regulatory law and the clinical practice of the neurosciences -- Digital medicine and the data revolution managing digital distraction and (...) EMR : liability while leveraging opportunities in teleneurology and telecritical care -- Developing and leading a sustainable high reliability high performing unit : theories of quality, teamwork, medical error, and patient safety -- Neurolaw and the integration of neuroscience, ethics, and the law : the new frontiers. (shrink)

Does the concept of “subject” still have any logical-scientific consistency that could give it some relevance in the contemporary demands of rationality? Or is it rather a kind of fossil of metaphysical speculation that should be completely ruled out? Judging from the course of the history of philosophy, which for nearly 400 years has been devoted to the criticism of the subject’s conception directly deriving from the Cartesian cogito, it is amazing the stimulant power of this phantom that has so (...) productively haunted our thinking throughout the centuries.From a critical and deconstructive perspective of subjectivity and selfhood, neurosciences could be seen as the definitive blow to the “I,” conceived in Cartesian... (shrink)

The Mathematics Education and Neurosciences project is an interdisciplinary research program that bridges mathematics education research with neuroscientific research. The bidirectional collaboration will provide greater insight into young children's (aged four to six years) mathematical abilities. Specifically, by combining qualitative ‘design research’ with quantitative ‘experimental research’, we aim to come to a more thorough understanding of prerequisites that are involved in the development of early spatial and number sense. The mathematics education researchers are concerned with kindergartner's spatial structuring ability, while (...) the neuroscientists are studying kindergartner's automatic quantity processing and its effect on mathematical development. The outcomes of these investigations should contribute to practical ways of fostering and supporting young children's mathematical thinking and learning. (shrink)

L’apparition des modèles connexionnistes dans les années 1980 a transformé le problème de la frontière séparant les neurosciences de la psychologie cognitive. Alors que les modèles cognitivistes de traitement symbolique s’inspiraient directement de « l’architecture von Neumann » des ordinateurs et laissaient aux neurosciences le soin de décrire en termes physicalistes l’inscription matérielle du symbolique(« l’implémentation»), les modèles connexionnistes proposent des formalismes mathématiques qui rendent compte, en termes de systèmes dynamiques, de cette implémentation. À la frontière entre niveaux neuronaux et (...) niveaux symboliques se substitue une lecture nouvelle des uns et des autres. (shrink)

"Dans les années 1960, Gilbert Durand, marqué par Gaston Bachelard, a développé une conception globale, complexe, transdisciplinaire de l'imagination, centrée sur le mythe langagier et les langages visuels. Parallèlement à Claude Lévi-Strauss, qui mettait en avant la notion de structure mythique et d'enracinement neuronal de la culture, G. Durand opta pour un "structuralisme figuratif" où la signification des images, tout en s'enracinant dans le biologique, relevait aussi d'une symbolisation, plus proche des psychanalyses et de G. Bachelard que de la sémiotique. (...) L'imagination et ses œuvres individuelles et collectives sont la résultante d'un "trajet anthropologique" qui s'étend des soubassements neurobiologiques aux matrices des mythes sociaux et religieux et vice versa. Plus de cinquante ans après, les avancées des sciences physiques et biologiques, neurologiques et cognitives permettent de jeter un regard nouveau sur l'ensemble des fonctions mentales, ainsi que sur les théories modernes du vivant et du cerveau. En quoi ces savoirs nouveaux éclairent-ils l'imagination et l'imaginaire, dans quelle mesure viennent-ils converger avec les références anciennes de G. Durand, quelle nouvelle anthropologie post-durandienne de l'imaginaire peut-on voir émerger?"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

"The Cognitive Neurosciences III is a magnificent accomplishment. It covers topics trom ions to consciousness, from reflexes to social psychology. ...

Véronique Adam : Les neurosciences ne s’intéressent que depuis très récemment à l’olfaction. Pourriez‑vous expliquer pourquoi ce sens est devenu un objet d’étude plus prégnant? Jean-Louis Millot : En fait, l’olfaction demeure encore peu étudiée comparée à d’autres modalités sensorielles. De manière générale, les neurosciences cognitives actuelles, comme d’autres investigations scientifiques chez l’homme par le passé, se focalisent davantage sur les compétences cognitives complexes, telles qu...

This book offers a provocative account of interdisciplinary research across the neurosciences, social sciences and humanities. Setting itself against standard accounts of interdisciplinary 'integration,' and rooting itself in the authors' own experiences, the book establishes a radical agenda for collaboration across these disciplines. Rethinking Interdisciplinarity does not merely advocate interdisciplinary research, but attends to the hitherto tacit pragmatics, affects, power dynamics, and spatial logics in which that research is enfolded. Understanding the complex relationships between brains, minds, and environments requires a (...) delicate, playful and genuinely experimental interdisciplinarity, and this book shows us how it can be done. This book is open access under a CC-BY license and funded by The Wellcome Trust. (shrink)

This essay summarizes representative work in treatments of wisdom in Psychology and the neurosciences. It concludes with suggestions for how this work might cohere with and be enriched by engaging the work of Michael Polanyi.

The neurosciences are generating new findings regarding genetic and neurobiological aspects of the pathophysiology of mental disorders. Especially, certain genetic risk factors like neuregulin-1 seem to predispose individuals to a psychotic phenotype beyond the limits of traditional classificatory boundaries between organic psychoses in Alzheimer’s disease, bipolar affective disorder and schizophrenia. Little, however, is known about how such genetic risk factors actually confer an increased risk for psychosis in an individual patient. A gap between neuroscientific findings and psychopathological phenomena exists. The (...) main hypothesis how this gap may be bridged is that mental disorders arise as a consequence of dysfunctions of normal mental functions. Modularity may provide a useful conceptual framework in that temporally and/or spatially stable neural circuits subserve certain physiological functions of the human brain, which become the target of pathophysiological effectors. The idea of a modular construction of the human brain is based on neurobiological evidence regarding the columnar architecture of the cerebral cortex, which provides certain elementary analytical functions. Modular dysfunctions may be assessed with methods of experimental psychopathology, in which subsystems of brain functions are tested with standardized experimental psychological techniques (functional psychopathology). The main questions here are how to define a module, and whether the classical neuroscientific definitions can be used to characterize higher integrative functions of the human brain. (shrink)

2. Daugman, J. G. Brain metaphor and brain theory 3. Mundale, J. Neuroanatomical Foundations of Cognition: Connecting the Neuronal Level with the Study of Higher Brain Areas.

The article aimed to determine the relationship between neuroscience and emotional states in university faculty members from Latin America during the post-pandemic stage of COVID-19. It highlights the importance of understanding emotions from a neuroscientific perspective to develop strategies that enhance emotional management and resilience in the educational context. The descriptive-correlational research included a sample of 318 faculty members from various Latin American countries. The results revealed severe levels of stress (88.4%) and anxiety (92.1%), as well as inadequate (40.9%) or (...) moderate (46.9%) levels of resilience among the faculty members. A strong positive correlation was found between neuroscience and emotional states (rho=0.860), as well as a good positive correlation between neuroscience and resilience (rho=0.739). The study concludes that the knowledge and application of neuroscience principles could contribute to lower levels of stress and anxiety and increase resilience in university faculty members, emphasizing the importance of integrating these disciplines into the understanding and management of emotions in the educational field. (shrink)

In the last decades neuroscience provided so many important contributions to philosophy of mind that nowadays the latter is inconceivable without the former in every topic this philosophical branch deals with. The studies connected to action understanding provided great advances in the field of developmental psychology for what concerns social learning abilities grounded on imitation. All information received by the infants are transmitted through actions. It would be impossible to conceive infant imitation without action interpretation. According to Meltzoff’s “like-me” hypothesis, (...) imitation is possible in human infants already at birth in virtue of an identification mechanism with the adults supported by mirror neurons (MNs) based simulation system. However, if we split the types of actions into two general categories, instrumental and communicative actions, we will see, according to an alternative account, how infants modulate differently the comprehension of observed scenarios, depending on whether they are passive observers (in the case of instrumental actions) or actively involved (in the case of communicative actions). Such a recognition of action features seems to be evident through different degrees of motor activation, as ERP techniques applied to infants and young adults revealed. Neuroscientific evidence highlight the crucial role of brain areas connected to motor activation for action interpretation, but at the same time, they allow both a bottom-up process and a top-down process interpretation whereby the motor activation is seen as a product of action understanding rather than its determining causal factor. The aim of the present study is to examine such epistemological conflicting perspectives underlying action interpretation, and their repercussions on different social learning theories. (shrink)

Starting from a philosophical perspective, which states that the living structures are actually a combination between matter and information, this article presents the results on an analysis of the bipolar information-matter structure of the human organism, distinguishing three fundamental circuits for its survival, which demonstrates and supports this statement, as a base for further development of the informational model of consciousness to a general informational model of the human organism. For this, it was examined the Informational System of the Human (...) Body and its components from the perspective of the physics/information/neurosciences concepts, showing specific functions of each of them, highlighting the correspondence of these centers with brain support areas and with their projections in consciousness, which are: Center of Acquisition and Storing of Information (CASI) reflected in consciousness as memory, Center of Decision and Command (CDC) (decision), Info-Emotional Center (IES) (emotions), Maintenance Informational System (MIS) (personal status), Genetic Transmission System (GTS) (associativity/genetic transmission) and Info Genetic Generator (IGG) related by the body development and inherited behaviors. The Info Connection (IC), detected in consciousness as trust and confidence can explain the Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) and associated phenomena. This connection is antientropic and informational, because from the multitude of uncertain possibilities is selected a certain one, helping/supporting the survival and life. The human body appears therefore as a bipolar structure, connected to two poles: information and matter. It is argued that the survival, which is the main objective of the organism, is complied in three main ways, by means of: (i) the reactive operation for adaptation by attitude; (ii) the info-genetic integration of information by epigenetic processes and genetic transmission of information for species survival, both circuits (i) and (ii) being associated to the information pole; (iii) maintenance of the material body (defined as informed matter) and its functions, associated to the matter pole of the organism. It results therefore that the informational system of the human body is supported by seven informational circuits formed by the neuro-connections between the specific zones of the brain corresponding to the informational subsystems, the cognitive centers, the sensors, transducers and execution (motor/mobile) elements. The fundamental informational circuits assuring the survival are the reactive circuit, expressible by attitude, the epigenetic/genetic circuit, absorbing and codifying information to be transmitted to the next generations, and the metabolic circuit, connected to matter (matter pole). The presented analysis allows to extend the informational modeling of consciousness to an Informational Model of Consciousness and Organism, fully describing the composition/functions of the organism in terms of information/matter and neurosciences concept. (shrink)

The majority of the chapters in this edition of The Cognitive Neurosciences are new, and those from the first edition have been completely rewritten and updated ...

Le " libre arbitre ", cette capacité à choisir librement ou encore à déterminer notre propre volonté, semble menacé par les avancées de la psychologie et des neurosciences contemporaines. Or, certaines interrogations philosophiques doivent être résolues avant de tirer les conséquences de ces résultats empiriques : le déterminisme causal, qui est au fondement de toute démarche scientifique, est-il compatible avec la notion de libre arbitre? Quel type de relation entretiennent l'esprit et le cerveau? L'examen de ces problèmes fondamentaux constitue le (...) préalable à l'interprétation des données issues des neurosciences, en particulier des expériences de Benjamin Libet qui ont semblé remettre en question l'efficacité causale de nos décisions conscientes. Par ailleurs, il est légitime de se demander si les limites de la conscience et le rapport qu'elle entretient avec les processus inconscients, qu'ils relèvent de l'Inconscient freudien ou de l' " inconscient cognitif " mis en lumière par les neurosciences, constituent un frein à l'exercice de notre liberté. Cet ouvrage esquisse une solution nouvelle à ces questions. Il montre comment la psychologie et les neurosciences, bien que menaçant la conception traditionnelle du libre arbitre, permettraient de concevoir en leur sein même une redéfinition de cette notion, envisagée comme une capacité relative et non plus absolue, nécessitant un apprentissage. (shrink)

This volume contains reports on work sessions sponsored by MIT. Participants include distinguished neuroscientists and specialists in communications and psychology from North and South America and Europe. Of particular interest to philosophers are reports on the biology of drives and on neural coding. In the former, evidence is presented to show that the same unfamiliar stimulus may elicit either curiosity or fear behavior in members of the same species, and that fear responses, for example, may be elicited either by discrepancy (...) with a neuronal model, or by concordance with one. Moreover, there is evidence that these responses may be acquired independently of experience of those stimulus conditions. The authors suggest that generalizations cannot be made on the basis of a single behavior type paradigm, like feeding behavior, for example. The report on neural coding reviews work on such questions as: What counts as a code in the context of a nervous system? What modes of representations are theoretically plausible? Are there rules about the kinds of codes and the domains in time and space where they are used? It is now held that the nervous system uses neither an infinity of codes nor just a few, but many. In both work sessions the definition of key terms poses an important, and unsolved problem.--M. B. M. (shrink)

_Cognitive Neuroscience is an interdisciplinary area of research that combines measurement of brain activity (mostly by means of neuroimaging) with a simultaneous performance of cognitive tasks by human subjects. These investigations have been successful in the task of connecting the sciences of the brain (Neurosciences) and the sciences of the mind (Cognitive Sciences). Advances on this kind of research provide a map of localization of cognitive functions in the human brain. Do these results help us to understand how mind relates (...) to the brain? In my view, the results obtained by the Cognitive Neurosciences lead to new investigations in the domain of Molecular Neurobiology, aimed at discovering biophysical mechanisms that generate the activity measured by neuroimaging instruments. In this context, I argue that the understanding of how ionic/molecular processes support cognition and consciousness cannot be made by means of the standard reductionist explanations. Knowledge of ionic/molecular mechanisms can contribute to our understanding of the human mind as long as we assume an alternative form of explanation, based on psycho-physical similarities, together with an ontological view of mentality and spirituality as embedded in physical nature (and not outside nature, as frequently assumed in western culture)._. (shrink)

In its predominant form, the understanding of the neurosciences, which stand in high public esteem, is a naturalistic one. The critique of this naturalism concerns the technical modelling of brain functions as a syntactic or control loop machine. Adequate solutions to the mind-body problem are not found in this way.

Freud's legacy deriving from his work The project for a scientific psychology (1895) could give a new impetus to the dialogue between psychoanalysis and neurosciences. A rapproachment phase is warrented. Based on the work of psychoanalysts who are themselves neuroscientists (such as Mauro Mancia, Martha Koukkou and Harold Shevrin) or have a long term dialogue with neuroscientists (Arnold Modell), three points of epistemological congruence are described: dualism is no longer a satisfactory solutioncautions for the centrality of interpretation (hermeneutics)the self-criticism of (...) neuroscientists. (shrink)

It was no accident that the first neuroscience community, the Neurosciences Research Program (NRP), took shape in the 1960s at MIT, the birthplace of cybernetics. Francis O. Schmitt, known as the founding father of the NRP, was a famous biologist and an avid reader of cybernetics. Focusing on the intellectual and institutional context that Schmitt was situated in, this article unveils the way that the brain was conceptualized as a distinct object, requiring the launch of a new research community in (...) the US. In doing so, this article moves beyond the dominant narratives on the triumph of molecularization of the brain at the beginning of neuroscience. Instead, it argues that what brought researchers together in the name of neuroscience was not just a molecule but an aspiration to develop biological theories of the brain/mind, which resonated with biologists in a postwar context and was materialized through support for basic research. The article highlights the tension over the computerization and molecularization of the brain, which shaped the interdisciplinary gathering of neuroscientists in the context of growing interest in basic research. Thereby, this article reveals the rise of theoretical concerns in brain science that reflect the distinct desires and concerns of biologists in the US at an intellectual and institutional level. By revisiting the launch of the NRP with a focus on Schmitt, the article sheds light on the historical contingencies in launching the new community as neuroscience in the US and their meaning for the locality and transiency of (inter)disciplinarity in brain science. (shrink)

Les relations humaines peuvent-elles transformer nos vies? En croisant le discours de Bergson avec celui des neurosciences cognitives sur la notion de plasticité, ce livre ouvre l'horizon d'une philosophie des relations interhumaines. Il s'agit d'une enquête originale, stimulante et importante, qui ouvre des pistes pour de futures recherches. Y est étudiée a manière dont la plasticité ouvre sur les relations vitales entre les humains, conduisant à des transformations sociales, et à l'espérance que celles-ci doivent continuer à susciter.

The third edition of a work that defines the field of cognitive neuroscience, with extensive new material including new chapters and new contributors.

The study analyzes modern reductivist and antireductivist approaches to understanding the interaction between philosophy and neuroscience. It analyzes the content and grounds for using the concepts of neuroscience and neurosciences, philosophy of neuroscience, and neurophilosophy. The milestones in the development of neuroreductivism, from Patricia Churchland’s arguments in support of intertheoretic reduction through Francis Crick’s eliminativism to John Bickle’s ruthless reductionism, are described. The ontological, methodological, and epistemic grounds for the reduction to neurosciences of other ways of representing mind and body (...) are analyzed. Drawing on the post-Wittgensteinian paradigm of the philosophy of neuroscience of Max Bennett, Peter Hacker, and Andrew Reynolds, the semantic problems that arise in the neurosciences when epistemic reduction is attempted are described and derive from the inability to eliminate the basic metaphorical level of meaning-making and transmission rooted in everyday language and its figures, among which metaphors are fundamental. The descriptivist approach to the language of neurosciences is contrasted with neurorevisionism, an attempt to “correct” established ways of conceptualizing consciousness and corporeality, akin to earlier revisionisms, particularly physicalism, and forced to deal with similar problems. Reduction - the operation of the “return,” itself understood metaphorically - and antireduction, which resists scientific revisionism and “returns” understanding to the level of everyday language and philosophy to descriptive work, is presented as a circular hermeneutical movement necessary for scientific and philosophical understanding, but not leading to disciplinary hegemony or the “victory” of either side. The study concludes with a sketch of the publications included in the rubric. (shrink)

In Joseph Butler, we have an account of human beings as moral beings that is, as this essay demonstrates, being supported by the recently emerging findings of the neurosciences. This applies particularly to Butler's portrayal of our empathic emotions. Butler discovered their moral significance for motivating and guiding moral decisions and actions before the neurosciences did. Butler has, in essence, added a sixth sense to our five senses: this is the moral sense by means of which we perceive what we (...) ought or ought not do. The moral sense yields relatively reliable moral perceptions when we love our neighbors as ourselves, and when our love for ourselves is genuine. Accurate moral perceptions will be thwarted by self-deceit—that is, by a self-partiality devoid of neighbor love, a condition that thwarts genuine self-love. This essay explores the parallels between Butler's understanding of self-deceit and Robert J. Lifton's understanding of "doubling.". (shrink)

Notre entreprise consiste à comparer la théorie cartésienne de l’admiration avec une théorie neuroscientifique de l’évaluation cognitive afin d’établir les filiations et les ruptures conceptuelles et doctrinales qui existent sur ce point avec le cartésianisme. Nous questionnons plus largement le passage de la pure évaluation cognitive au déclenchement des réactions corporelles dans le cadre du processus émotionnel : à quelles difficultés Descartes s’est-t-il confronté dans la description neurologique du passage de la cognition à l’émotion? Et les neurosciences parviennent-elles, dans le (...) rapport qu’elles entretiennent avec les sciences cognitives, à surmonter ces difficultés? Nous comparons ainsi l’articulation entre l’évaluation cognitive et le déclenchement des émotions que développe le neurobiologiste Joseph LeDoux dans son ouvrage The Emotional Brain et les passages où Descartes articule l’admiration avec le déclenchement des autres passions dans les Passions de l’âme et le Traité de l’homme. Cette étude nous conduira finalement à montrer ce que le philosophe peut trouver dans les théories neuroscientifiques pour surmonter certaines difficultés ouvertes par le cartésianisme. (shrink)