[Comp-neuro] New book: (Redish) The Mind within the Brain: How we make decisions and how those decisions go wrong

Now available:

A. David Redish (2013)
_The Mind within the Brain: How we make decisions and how those decisions go wrong_

Oxford University Press

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Our choices make us who we are, and yet how we make those choices has remained shrouded in mystery.   Over the past decades, a multitude of fields studying decision-making have converged on similar mechanisms, suggesting that decision-making within the mammalian brain (including the human) arises from an interaction of identifiable subsystems.  These systems include both those involved in action-selection (Reflexes, Pavlovian, Deliberative, and Procedural) and support systems (Perceptual, Motor, Motivational, and Situation-recognition).   The book shows how current science understands these systems, following from the evidence that the mind is instantiated by a physical brain. The fact that we are physical brains has implications for understanding both normal function (imagination, memory, decision-making) and abnormal dysfunction (addiction, gambling, psychiatric disorders), as well as implications for what differentiates humans from other animals, our understanding of morality, and consciousness.

Table of Contents:

DECISIONS AND THE BRAIN
1. What Is a Decision?
2. The Tale of the Thermostat
3. The Definition of Value
4. Value, Euphoria, and the Do-It-Again Signal
5. Risk and Reward

THE DECISION-MAKING SYSTEM
6. Multiple Decision-Making Systems
7. Reflexes
8. Emotion and the Pavlovian Action-Selection System
9. Deliberation
10. The Habits of Our Lives
11. Integrating Information
12. The Stories We Tell
13. Motivation
14. The Tradeoff Between Exploration and Exploitation
15. Self-Control

THE BRAIN WITH A MIND OF ITS OWN
16. The Physical Mind
17. Imagination
18. Addiction
19. Gambling and Behavioral Addictions
20. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
21. Computational Psychiatry

THE HUMAN CONDITION
22. What Makes Us Human?
23. The Science of Morality
24. The Conundrum of Robotics

Epilogue

APPENDIX
A. Information Processing in Neurons
B. Gleaning Information fr om the Brain
C. Content-Addressable Memory