THE NEUROLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropathology (Hardcover)

~ Steven Laureys (Editor), Giulio Tononi (Editor)
Key Phrases: lewy body disease, differential diagnosis, absolute agnosia, New York, Proc Natl Acad Sci, Nat Neurosci (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is a very welcome addition to the field of neuroscience literature and should be read by anyone involved in the care of persons with disorders of consciousness... I would highly recommend the text to any clinician involved in the neurosciences with an interest in consciousness and/or disorders of consciousness. It is well worth the asking price and is an excellent source of current information on the topic. Overall rating 9 out of 10." - Nathan Zasler, MD, Chief Editor, NeuroTrauma Letter, Chairperson, IBIA, Medical Director and CEO, Tree of Life and Concussion Care Centre of Virginia

"Laureys and the Liege school have shifted the paradigm in the clinical understanding of disturbed consciousness. He and Tononi have edited a ground breaking book. In this field the book to have and read next to Plum and Posner's Diagnosis of Stupor and Coma is now Laureys and Tononi. Clinicians need to be aware of the recent rapid advances in consciousness studies, many occasioned by imaging and non-invasive brain monitoring, because they will affect management of their most vulnerable patients." - Richard Frackowiak, University College London and Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris

"An outstandingly unique book reassembling the most recent data of the rising science of consciousness." - Jean-Pierre Changeux, College de France

"Here, at last, is a survey of the way that damage to the brain alters consciousness. This volume is a well-equipped hardware shop with most of the pieces that are needed to build a state-of-the-art model of how the brain performs its most magical function, the creation of a self that sees, perceives, knows that it does so, and dares to ask how." - Allan Hobson, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA

Product Description

Understanding consciousness is the major unsolved problem in biology. One increasingly important method of studying consciousness is to study disorders of consciousness, e.g. brain damage and disease states leading to vegetative states, coma, minimally conscious states, etc. Many of these studies are very much in the public eye because of their relationship to controversies about coma patients (e.g. Terry Schiavo case in the US recently), and the relationship to one of the major philosophical, sociological, political, and religious questions of humankind.
This is the first book to summarize our current understanding of the neuroanatomical and functional underpinnings of human consciousness by emphasizing a lesional approach offered via the study of neurological patients. The selected contributors are all outstanding authors and undisputed leaders in their field.

- The first major book on the Neurology of Consciousness, i.e. on the study of brain damages and disease states that lead to varying levels of disturbances in human consciousness (vegetative, coma, minimally conscious states, etc)
- Structured, illustrated, and priced to be attractive to a wide market, including students in Neuroscience, Neurology, Psychology, Psychiatry etc
- Articles from the main researchers in the field, including Christof Koch, Marcus Raichle, Allan Hobson, Nicholas Schiff, Joseph Fins, Michael Gazzaniga, Lionel Naccache
- Unique and comprehensive in its focus
- Of great interest in the ethical discussion of coma cases, includes a chapter on the ethics by JJ Fins
- Of great interest to anybody thinking about consciousness as one of the major philosophical, sociological, political, and religious questions of our time

Product Details

• Hardcover: 440 pages
• Publisher: Academic Press; 1 edition (October 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0123741688
• ISBN-13: 978-0123741684
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #685,593 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Encyclopedia Neurologica, September 26, 2009

By	David Krapf (Georgia, USA) - See all my reviews

The Neurology of Consciousness is a title that invokes ideas in the reader; ideas of a scientific analysis of what consciousness is, while maintaining the humility of a researcher who does not yet grasp the depths of his field of work. These are ideals that are not met by this text. Instead, an overview of current knowledge about the varying stages of consciousness is portrayed in an unrelated series of articles that, while effectively introducing many subjects to the reader, never attempts to answer what consciousness is. The net result of this collection is a decent text that allows the reader to be introduced to the science of neurology without having to wade through vast amounts of actual research. As a scientific portrayal of consciousness, however, it fails miserably. This results from the lack of any cohesiveness between the chapters, or attempts to link the various concepts together.

The Basics of The Neurology of Consciousness begins with a brief explanation on why consciousness is a neurological phenomenon. It then proceeds to describe many of the techniques that are utilized to gather data in the later articles: fMRI, EEG, and others. The text then proceeds to describe many of the "norms" of consciousness; aspects of everyday life that make interesting material for study. The articles used here flowed oddly well, and made up the highlights of the book.
The ultimate reason that this section out performed the other two is that it actually felt like these articles were meant to be read together and in sequence. The effective correlation between the scientific basis of neural consciousness, the tools of study, and direct use of these concepts in the following articles worked incredibly well. The latter three parts dealing with normal modes of consciousness played off each other in such a way as to actually feel like one needed to read and understand the previous article in order to understand the next; the hallmark of a well written text. Unfortunately, this is a tendency that is lacking in the rest of book.

Walking, Sleep, and Anesthesia begins the encyclopedic trend found in the rest of the book. Every article is its own entity with little to nothing to do with the overall context of the book, and little is done to ever pull the material found here into a larger description of the neurology of consciousness. The net result of this is a series of articles that result in the book being little more than an encyclopedia containing neurological articles. Each article is a fascinating, scientific analysis of dreams, sleep walking, and anesthesia induced unconsciousness. All are analyzed individually, each analysis ending in a phrase similar to "We have yet to determine the exact cause of blank, but will endeavor to continue our work until we do". This lack of understanding is understandable given the topic, and the honesty inherent in this admission results in an article that the reader can take more seriously.

Coma and Related Conditions, a title that alludes to the near death state often ascribed to those patients in persistent comas. In reality, the section deals with many conditions in which the patient is entirely aware, but is not able to interact with the world or simply loses touch with what we would consider reality. Some of the conditions of the first descriptor include brain death, vegetative state, and minimally conscious state. While these conditions do have apparent similarities, they are diagnostically dissimilar and no attention is paid to how these would further our understanding of consciousness; protracting the encyclopedic feel of the book. The remaining articles include descriptions of Locked-in Syndrome, dementia, and how technology can be used to aid patients suffering from the aforementioned conditions. Again, the articles lack any cohesion and no attempt is made to further the stated goal of the book. Unfortunately, this trend continues in the fourth and last section.

Here all attempts at cohesiveness to the topic are given up and the reader is left with a collection of apoplectic articles that have nothing to do with each other, or the stated topic of the book. This section, Seizures, Neglects and Assorted Disorders, is a catch all; an attempt by the editors to fill in all the gaps in their whirl wind tour of neurological conditions. We have epilepsy, split brain syndrome, conversion hysteria, out of body experiences, near death experiences, aphasia, brain plasticity, and amnesia. Most of these articles do have the same thoroughness and seriousness that the rest of the collection posses, the section on near death experiences, however, was almost insulting to read. The author describes the goals of future experiments as "leading to the demystification of near-death experiences". This line portrays a lack of any humility in the face of something that he does not understand, and results in the reader being more annoyed than educated. Outside of this incident, the entire section seems a half hearted attempt to complete an ill conceived idea.

The book concludes with a thirty page summary of every article in the book, and that is all. No serious attempt is ever made to combine all of the material presented into a cohesive unit. The result is a book that is neither a journal nor a textbook, but an encyclopedia of the various neurological conditions that affect consciousness. As an encyclopedia it is an effective reference to any of the conditions presented in the text. It also paints a relatively easy to understand picture of every condition that it deals with. But outside of reference or an introduction to the presented material, this book offers little. If one is interested in beginning to understand one or more of the topics mentioned in the book, they should pick it up at a library or second hand. Purchase of this book should be reserved to those that are interested in those conditions affect human consciousness. As an introduction to neurological conditions, this book succeeds, but not at much else.