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Author: Anthony J. Sanford
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012-12-20
Total Pages: 339
ISBN-13: 1107017564
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →An examination of the scientific evidence for the mechanisms which underlie the effect a writer's language has on the reader.
Author: Christopher Comer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-01-28
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 1350127825
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Stories can inspire love, anger, fear and nostalgia – but what is going on in our brains when this happens? And how do our minds conjure up worlds and characters from the words we read on the page? Rapid advances in the scientific understanding of the brain have cast new light on how we engage with literature. This book – collaboratively written by an experienced neuroscientist and literary critic and writer – explores these new insights. Key concepts in neuroscience are first introduced for non-specialists and a range of literary texts by writers such as Ian McEwan, Jim Crace and E.L. Doctorow are read in light of the latest scientific thought on the workings of the mind and brain. Brain, Mind, and the Narrative Imagination demonstrates how literature taps into deep structures of memory and emotion that lie at the heart of our humanity. It will be of interest to readers of all sorts and students from both the humanities and the sciences.
Author: Paul B. Armstrong
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2020-05-26
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 1421437759
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Taking up the age-old question of what our ability to tell stories reveals about language and the mind, this truly interdisciplinary project should be of interest to humanists and cognitive scientists alike.
Author: James A. Wise
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2016-05-11
Total Pages: 210
ISBN-13: 1443893129
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book presents a unique and intuitively compelling way of understanding how humans think. It argues that narratives are the natural mode of thinking, that the “urge” to think narratively reflects known neurological processes, and that, although narrative thinking is a product of evolution, it enables us to transcend our evolutionary limits and actively shape our own futures. In remarkably engaging language, the authors describe how the currency of neural activity in the brain is transformed into the qualitatively different currency of conscious experience—the everyday, purposeful, story-like experience with which we all are familiar. The book then examines the nature of thought and how it leads to purposeful action, discussing, among other concerns, how memories about the past, perceptions about the present, and expectations about the future are structured as plausible, coherent narratives by causation, purpose, and time, and how errors are introduced into one’s narratives, both naturally and by other people (often intentionally), and how those errors bias one’s expectations about the future and the actions taken (or not taken) as a consequence. Each of these discussions is followed by a commentary that ties them to interesting facts and questions from throughout the physical and social sciences. The book is concluded with the argument that narrative thought is what is meant when one uses the word “mind.”
Author: David Williams
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-05-29
Total Pages: 316
ISBN-13: 0739143999
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Until recently, scientific and literary cultures have existed side-by-side but most often in parallel universes, without connection. The Trickster Brain: Neuroscience, Evolution, and Nature by David Williams addresses the premise that humans are a biological species stemming from the long process of evolution, and that we do exhibit a universal human nature, given to us through our genes. From this perspective, literature is shown to be a product of our biological selves. By exploring central ideas in neuroscience, evolutionary biology, linguistics, music, philosophy, ethics, religion, and history, Williams shows that it is the circuitry of the brain’s hard-wired dispositions that continually create similar tales around the world: “archetypal” stories reflecting ancient tensions that arose from our evolutionary past and the very construction of our brains. The book asserts that to truly understand literature, one must look at the biological creature creating it. By using the lens of science to examine literature, we can see how stories reveal universal aspects of the biological mind. The Trickster character is particularly instructive as an archetypal character who embodies a raft of human traits and concerns, for Trickster is often god, devil, musical, sexual, silver tongued, animal, and human at once, treading upon the moral dictates of culture. Williams brings together science and the humanities, demonstrating a critical way of approaching literature that incorporates scientific thought.
Author: Lisa Cron
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Published: 2012-07-10
Total Pages: 274
ISBN-13: 1607742454
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This guide reveals how writers can utilize cognitive storytelling strategies to craft stories that ignite readers’ brains and captivate them through each plot element. Imagine knowing what the brain craves from every tale it encounters, what fuels the success of any great story, and what keeps readers transfixed. Wired for Story reveals these cognitive secrets—and it’s a game-changer for anyone who has ever set pen to paper. The vast majority of writing advice focuses on “writing well” as if it were the same as telling a great story. This is exactly where many aspiring writers fail—they strive for beautiful metaphors, authentic dialogue, and interesting characters, losing sight of the one thing that every engaging story must do: ignite the brain’s hardwired desire to learn what happens next. When writers tap into the evolutionary purpose of story and electrify our curiosity, it triggers a delicious dopamine rush that tells us to pay attention. Without it, even the most perfect prose won’t hold anyone’s interest. Backed by recent breakthroughs in neuroscience as well as examples from novels, screenplays, and short stories, Wired for Story offers a revolutionary look at story as the brain experiences it. Each chapter zeroes in on an aspect of the brain, its corresponding revelation about story, and the way to apply it to your storytelling right now.
Author: Bessel A. Van der Kolk
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2015-09-08
Total Pages: 466
ISBN-13: 0143127748
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Originally published by Viking Penguin, 2014.
Author: David Herman
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2013-07-12
Total Pages: 443
ISBN-13: 0262019183
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →With Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind, David Herman proposes a cross-fertilization between the study of narrative and research on intelligent behavior. This cross-fertilization goes beyond the simple importing of ideas from the sciences of mind into scholarship on narrative and instead aims for convergence between work in narrative studies and research in the cognitive sciences. The book as a whole centers on two questions: How do people make sense of stories? And: How do people use stories to make sense of the world? Examining narratives from different periods and across multiple media and genres, Herman shows how traditions of narrative research can help shape ways of formulating and addressing questions about intelligent activity, and vice versa. Using case studies that range from Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde to sequences from The Incredible Hulk comics to narratives told in everyday interaction, Herman considers storytelling both as a target for interpretation and as a resource for making sense of experience itself. In doing so, he puts ideas from narrative scholarship into dialogue with such fields as psycholinguistics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive, social, and ecological psychology. After exploring ways in which interpreters of stories can use textual cues to build narrative worlds, or storyworlds, Herman investigates how this process of narrative worldmaking in turn supports efforts to understand -- and engage with -- the conduct of persons, among other aspects of lived experience.
Author: Daniel Bergner
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-05-17
Total Pages: 339
ISBN-13: 0063004917
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →“A profound and powerful work of essential reporting." —The New York Times Book Review An important—and intimate—interrogation of how we treat mental illness and how we understand ourselves In the early 1960s, JFK declared that science would take us to the moon. He also declared that science would make the “remote reaches of the mind accessible” and cure psychiatric illness with breakthrough medications. We were walking on the moon within the decade. But today, psychiatric cures continue to elude us—as does the mind itself. Why is it that we still don’t understand how the mind works? What is the difference between the mind and the brain? And given all that we still don’t know, how can we make insightful, transformative choices about our psychiatric conditions? When Daniel Bergner’s younger brother was diagnosed as bipolar and put on a locked ward in the 1980s, psychiatry seemed to have achieved what JFK promised: a revolution of chemical solutions to treat mental illness. Yet as Bergner’s brother was deemed a dire risk for suicide and he and his family were told his disorder would be lifelong, he found himself taking heavy doses of medications with devastating side effects. Now, in recounting his brother’s journey alongside the gripping, illuminating stories of Caroline, who is beset by the hallucinations of psychosis, and David, who is overtaken by depression, Bergner examines the evolution of how we treat our psyches. He reveals how the pharmaceutical industry has perpetuated our biological view of the mind and our drug-based assumptions about treatment—despite the shocking price paid by many patients and the problematic evidence of drug efficacy. And he takes us into the pioneering labs of today’s preeminent neuroscientists, sharing their remarkably candid reflections and fascinating new theories of treatment. The Mind and the Moon raises profound questions about how we understand ourselves and the essential human divide between our brains and our minds. This is a book of thought-provoking reframings, delving into the science—and spirit—of our psyches. It is about vulnerability and personal dignity, the terrifying choices confronted by families and patients, and the prospect of alternatives. In The Mind and the Moon, Bergner beautifully explores how to seek a deeper engagement with ourselves and one another—and how to find a better path toward caring for our minds.
Author: Gary D. Fireman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2003-06-12
Total Pages: 264
ISBN-13: 019534989X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →We define our conscious experience by constructing narratives about ourselves and the people with whom we interact. Narrative pervades our lives--conscious experience is not merely linked to the number and variety of personal stories we construct with each other within a cultural frame, but is subsumed by them. The claim, however, that narrative constructions are essential to conscious experience is not useful or informative unless we can also begin to provide a distinct, organized, and empirically consistent explanation for narrative in relation to consciousness. Understanding the role of narrative in determining individual and collective consciousness has been elusive from within traditional academic frameworks. This volume argues that addressing so broad and complex a problem requires an examination from outside our insular disciplinary framework. Such an open examination would be informed by the inquiries and approaches of multiple disciplines. Recognition of the different approaches to examining personal stories will allow for the coordination of how narrative seems (its phenomenology), with what mental labor it does (its psychology), and how it is realized (its neurobiology). Only by overcoming the boundaries erected by multiple theoretical and discursive traditions can we begin to comprehend the nature and function of narrative in consciousness. Narrative and Consciousness brings together essays by exceptional scholars and scientists in the disciplines of literary theory, psychology, and neuroscience to examine how stories are constructed, how stories structure lived experience, and how stories are rooted in material reality (the human body). The specific topics addressed include narrative in the development of conscious awareness; autobiographical narrative, fiction and the construction of self; trauma and narrative disruptions; narrative, memory and identity; and the physiological and neural substrate of narrative. It is the editors' hope that the multidisciplinary nature of this collection will challenge the reader to move beyond disciplinary confines and toward a coherent interdisciplinary dialogue.
