...This chapter presents studies which demonstrate that cognitive decline in old age is not inevitable. The presence of cognitive and brain plasticity in older adults is discussed along with the ability of older brains to generate new neurons. The chapter presents a study which shows that the only...

...The results of studies which examined the idea that a decline in physical functioning does not necessarily result in a decline in mental functioning are presented. Magnetic-resonance imaging studies show that the brain loses volume with age, although this shrinkage is seen as part of the brain’s...

..., including improvement in their cognitive performance and increasing adult neurogenesis. The benefits of physical exercise for human brain function are explored, including the reduction of brain shrinkage and better spatial memory performance. The chapter also presents studies which reveal that physical...

...This chapter presents studies on the importance of cognitive training in maintaining benefits of cognitive functioning. The importance of cognitive training for the brain integrity and cognitive integrity of animals and older people is discussed, along with the benefits of training in real-world...

...This chapter focuses on the effects that lifestyle factors have on the cognitive and brain integrity of animals and humans. Studies show that lifestyle factors, including diet, exercise, and cognitive stimulation, will have a positive impact on cognitive aging if they are jointly experienced...

...This chapter explains the concept of effort on the basis of evidence from experimental and cognitive psychology, demonstrates how it has been used in conducting studies of brain activity, and goes on to examine the individual differences that play a role in determining the efficiency of brain...

...Language is difficult to understand because nothing is known about how it is processed in the brain. Many areas of the human brain play a role in language-related activities such as syntactic operations. Aspects of the language faculty have significant heritability and there seems to have been...

...Researchers have relied on human electrophysiology and brain imaging techniques to test the extent to which specific neural areas or operations are dedicated to syntax (that is, “hardwired”). A number of studies show a one-to-one correspondence between syntactic phenomena and brain areas...

...This chapter examines the role of brain circuits in the processing of syntax within the framework of possible neuroanatomical differences of the human and nonhuman primate brain. It considers evidence based on event-related potentials and functional brain imaging to show how local phrase-structure...

...Information about the way the brain is organized to support processing of syntax can be obtained using the lesion approach, in which the effects of lesions on syntactic processing are analyzed, and the activation approach, which involves analysis of changes in neural activity related to syntactic...

..., is relevant for language, but not exclusively for this domain of cognition. The chapter discusses a general proposal to account for the distribution of labor between different components of the language network in the brain. It also presents arguments for the immediacy principle, which denies a privileged...

...This book examines the role played by brain imaging in cognitive neuroscience by exploring published studies and related literature that compare brain images to cognitive processes. It also discusses whether brain imaging and other recording techniques have any role in providing a solution...

...Defining emotion is considered an extremely difficult task and there is hardly any concrete definition that positively leads to proper results from a study of the brain correlates of emotion. Imaging experiments signify that the brain regions associated with emotional activity most likely differ...

...This chapter discusses how the brain behaves in learning and memory. It begins with a description of the history of learning research and also discusses different components of the typology of learning and memory, which includes long-term memory, short-term or working memory, sensory memory...

...This chapter discusses the inability of brain imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to search for brain correlates of cognitive activity. Empirical observations reveal inconsistencies in the cognitive neuroscience research papers along with inconsistencies...

...Turning human brains into soup; 86 billion neurons in the average human brain; the human brain as a large primate brain; numbers of brain neurons in human ancestors; great apes as outliers in the body x brain size relationship Human brain Grinberg Léa Jacob Filho Wilson Azevedo Frederico Farfel...

...Cognitive and psychodynamic psychologists who study empathy have focused on its psychological dimensions rather than on brain mechanisms. However, recent experiments provide evidence that impaired empathy may be responsible for the behavioral disturbances observed in individuals suffering from both...

...Questions raised by the brief history of the verb can be grouped into three distinct research areas: questions about the formal mechanisms that interact in structuring sentences; questions about how these mechanisms are implemented physically in the brain; questions about what these sentences tell...

... that are executed automatically to understand why and how a given action does or does not become conscious. It looks at evidence showing that ongoing actions are primarily controlled unconsciously by the brain, with the subject’s consciousness being kept informed only after the event, and then more...

..., and that the decision to move might be made only when the subject becomes conscious of the urge. In this case, Libet’s experiments do not threaten free will. The chapter describes two competing theories about the nature of free will and suggests that Libet’s results do not support his contention that “the brain decides...