Splendors & Miseries Of The Brain

In Splendors and Miseries of the Brain, leading neurobiologist Semir Zeki, explores the huge price humans pay, in terms of happiness, for the enormously elegant and efficient machinery of the brain. The book has two main interrelated themes. The brain is an evolutionary triumph of neural engineering. Its capacity to seek knowledge and form generalized concepts is boundless. In this ground-breaking new study, Semir Zeki explores the enormously elegant and efficient machinery of the brain to analyze its products in creative disciplines and discover whether or not this intricate system brings different solutions to bear in solving problems in disparate fields. Splendors and Miseries of the Brain, which is derived from Balzac's novel of the same name, delves into the brain's key functions of obtaining knowledge and forming concepts about the world. While these functions have been more thoroughly documented in neurobiology's traditional disciplines—physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, pharmacology, mathematics, and computer science, to name but a few—Zeki goes beyond these fields to scientifically study the products of the brain in literature, music, art, and other fields. By studying these fields, Zeki shows that we can reach important conclusions about how the brain functions and its common processes. He also examines the heavy price to be paid in terms of human happiness that comes with the exquisite capacity of the brain and shows how misery can ultimately be turned to advantage, due to its intimate link to creativity. Splendors and Miseries of the Brain examines the elegant and efficient machinery of the brain, showing that by studying music, art, literature, and love, we can reach important conclusions about how the brain functions. discusses creativity and the search for perfection in the brain examines the power of the unfinished and why it has such a powerful hold on the imagination discusses Platonic concepts in light of the brain shows that aesthetic theories are best understood in terms of the brain discusses the inherited concept of unity-in-love using evidence derived from the world literature of love addresses the role of the synthetic concept in the brain (the synthesis of many experiences) in relation to art, using examples taken from the work of Michelangelo, Cézanne, Balzac, Dante, and others

Pagina's: 256, Editie: Eerste editie, Paperback, Wiley-Blackwell