The Student's Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience [Hardcover]

Jamie Ward (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 27, 2006 | ISBN-10: 1841695343 | ISBN-13: 978-1841695341 | Edition: 1

Reflecting recent changes in the way cognition and the brain are studied, this book provides a comprehensive and student-friendly guide to cognitive neuroscience. Following an introduction to neural structure and function, all the key methods and procedures of cognitive neuroscience are explained, with a view to helping students understand how they can be used to shed light on the neural basis of cognition.

The second part of the book goes on to present an up-to-date overview of the latest theories and findings in all the key topics in cognitive neuroscience, including vision, attention, memory, speech and language, numeracy, executive function and social and emotional behaviour. Throughout, case studies, newspaper reports and everyday examples are used to provide an easy way in to understanding the more challenging ideas that underpin the subject.

In addition each chapter includes:

• Summaries of key terms and points
• Example essay questions to aid exam preparation
• Recommended further reading
• Feature boxes exploring interesting and popular questions and their implications for the subject.

Written in an engaging style by a leading researcher in the field, this book will be invaluable as a core text for undergraduate modules in cognitive neuroscience. It can also be used as a key text on courses in cognition, cognitive neuropsychology or brain and behaviour. Those embarking on research will find it an invaluable starting point and reference.

We offer CD-ROM-based resources free of charge to instructors who recommend The Student's Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience by Jamie Ward. These resources include:

• A chapter-by-chapter, illustrated slideshow lecture course
• An innovative bank of multiple-choice questions, graded according to difficulty and which allow for confidence-weighted answers
• Comprehensive lecture planning advice tailored to different length courses.

Jamie Ward has researched and taught extensively in many areas of cognitive neuroscience. He is a leading authority on the subject of synaesthesia and has contributed to a wider understanding of it in both academic and lay circles.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Student's Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience is an excellent resource for anyone who is keen to understand the contribution that neuroscience can make to education, psychology and other related disciplines... However, perhaps more importantly than this, the reader is provided with information to allow them to go on to explore neuroscience research in the future; ... The book has been written in a clear and readable style that should make it accessible even to those without a background in the area. ... This book provides and excellent new addition to the growing dicsipline of cognitive neuroscience, and is sure to be of great use to anyone seeking to know more about this area. It will be of great value use to teachers of courses that involve a neuroscience component, such as psychology, as a central text in this area." - Dr. Sue Pickering, University of Bristol, in ESCalate

"Jamie Ward manages to explain complicated features of cognitive neuroscience by introducing examples, articles from the media, historical cameos and case studies to provide an engaging and challenging book. ... This is a seminal text that is all the more impressive for bringing cognitive neuroscience to life for subject students and non-experts alike." - Dr. Judith Whitmarsh, University of Wolverhampton,in ESCalate

"This is a terrific book. It is timely, up-to-date, written in a lively and engaging style and full of helpful guides and illustrations. It is particularly useful in including chapters on methods as well as on more traditional topic areas, in integrating work from neuropsychology with electrophysiological and imaging studies, and in covering social and emotional processes as well as cognitive processing." - Glyn Humphreys, Professor of Cognitive Psychology, University of Birmingham

"The Student's Guide To Cognitive Neuroscience is unique in that there are no comparable textbooks aimed at this level and it does an excellent job of providing a solid grounding in this broad field." - Charvy Narain, in Nature Neuroscience

"Jamie Ward has done a great service to the neuroscience community: he has written an easy to read, enjoyable introduction to cognitive neuroscience that will attract many students to the discipline. The concepts, results and methods of basic neuroscience, clinical neuropsychology, neuroimaging and cognitive pyschology are explained in simple direct language; many examples and illustrations bring the sciences of the mind and brain to life.  Perhaps the best feature of the book is the seamless weaving of the various research areas that jointly define cognitive neuroscience into a coherent whole. I will certainly use this book for my courses." - Professor Alfonso Caramazza, the Cognitive Neuropsychology Laboratory, Harvard University.

About the Author

Jamie Ward is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Sussex, UK.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Psychology Press; 1 edition (July 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841695343
• ISBN-13: 978-1841695341
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,318,444 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good info about brain and cognition, July 9, 2007

By 

Sal Nallig "djg1229" (Cary, NC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Student's Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience (Paperback)

This book is an accessible source for information in one of the hottest areas in science -- cognitive neuroscience. The book is not intended for experts (it won't give you any new ideas), nor for the reader who is not interested in putting forth a little effort. It is a student's guide and students study. But the effort is not great and the reward exceeds the effort if ou have any interest in the brain or the mind.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, April 5, 2009

By 

Dr. Lee D. Carlson (Baltimore, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Student's Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience (Paperback)

Mostly due to the experimental techniques that are now available to study brain activity, the field of cognitive neuroscience is exploding, generating great excitement not only among professional neuroscientists but also from those curious about advances in the field. New areas of research and new perspectives on ethics, legal philosophy, sociology, and artificial intelligence have been generated by the advances in cognitive neuroscience, and this entails that accurate documentation and tutorials be developed to detail these advances.

This book fills that need, and could be read not only by students who are entering the field of cognitive neuroscience but by those, who, like this reviewer, are very interested in the field. The small size of the book already dictates that much of it will read like a literature review, with pointers to many references, but the author gives enough detail to allow the reader to appreciate the subject matter. Readers who crave more in-depth coverage can consult the many references that are given in the book.

Everything about cognitive neuroscience is fascinating, and there are new surprises coming out of the laboratories on a daily basis. Some of the more recent ones, particularly those that make use of functional MRI and TMS are discussed in this book. The author also includes an historical introduction that puts the field in its proper context, and also serves to distinguish it from more speculative approaches that one finds in philosophy departments around the world. Particularly interesting because of its importance in artificial intelligence is the discussion in this introduction of domain specificity and modularity.

But the functions of the brain, whether they are localized or modularized, are characterized in cognitive neuroscience by studying individuals who show impairment of these functions. The author characterizes this strategy as being a compromise between that of (classical) neuro-psychology, which favors group studies, and cognitive neuro-psychology that favors single case studies. Typically it is lesions that cause impairments of cognitive processes, and it is quite surprising sometimes to learn to what degree these impairments are disentangled from other "nearby" brain processes. In this regard the author discusses `double dissociation' between cognitive/neural processes. Even more interesting because of its importance in artificial intelligence is the notion of `dual-task interference' wherein two tasks share the same cognitive processes. A better name for this might be the "entanglement" between two tasks, and it is the opinion of this reviewer that the study of the degree to which two tasks cannot be performed independently of one another is of utmost importance in understanding the brain as a computational machine.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great introduction, June 24, 2011

By 

meh - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Student's Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

From a students perspective: this book is extremely easy to read and comprehend. The layout of the the chapters, and flow of information within them, makes the content easy to digest. Found some statements that weren't necessarily true... But what text book doesn't have these? For a robust yet painless introduction to cognition and the brain, I would recommend.