The Unity of Consciousness: Binding, Integration, and Dissociation
Axel Cleeremans (Editor), Chris FrithBooks.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Consciousness has many elements, from sensory experiences such as vision, audition, and bodily sensation, to nonsensory aspects such as volition, emotion, memory, and thought. The apparent unity of these elements is striking: all are presented to us as experiences of a single subject, and all seem to be contained within a unified field of experience. But this apparent unity raises many questions. How do diverse systems in the brain co-operate to produce a unified experience? Are there conditions under which this unity breaks down? And is conscious experience really unified at all?In recent years, these questions have been addressed by researchers in many fields. Neurophysiologists and computational modelers have investigated the mechanisms by which binding and integration of disparate information may take place in the brain, producing a unified experience. Neuropsychological research has documented a large variety of dissociation disorders in which damage to specific brain regions leads to dissociated experiences, suggesting the apparent disintegration of a unified subject. Cognitive psychologists have investigated the role of attention and learning in the integration of information, and have examined conditions under which perception and action, or subjective experience and behavior, can become dissociated. Some cognitive modelers have suggested that unity is a mere illusion, while others have emphasized the role of a central unifying system in integrating sensory and motor experience. And philosophers have analyzed just what the unity of consciousness comes to, and whether we have reason to believe that it exists. With chapters from some of the leading thinkers on consciousness, this is a thought provoking new book that attempts to answer some of the big questions.
Synopsis
Philosopher, psychologists, and neuroscientists attended the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, held in Brussels in June and July 2000. The 14 papers that emerged from the conference explore what the unity of consciousness is, binding as the mechanism of unity, dissociation when unity breaks down, and integration as the emergence of unity. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Doody Review Services
Reviewer:Michael Joel Schrift, D.O., M.A.(University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine)
Description:This new and thought-provoking book focuses on the processes involved in organizing our varied unimodal sensory experiences as well as emotion, memory, and thought into a coherent phenomena called consciousness. The book is based on a conference entitled Fourth Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Consciousness, which took place in July 2000 in Belgium. Written and edited by internationally recognized researchers in the study of consciousness, this book is a valuable contribution to this fascinating subject.
Purpose:The purpose of the book (and the conference) is an attempt to answer some big questions: How do diverse systems in the brain interact to produce a coherent experience? Are there disorders of brain function in which this coherent experience breaks down? Is this coherent experience really unified? The editors and authors have produced an excellent summary of the attempts to answer these questions.
Audience:The intended audience are researchers in the field of consciousness including cognitive neuroscientists, philosophers, and psychologists.
Features:The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 focuses on the question: What is unity? Part 2 is devoted to the issue the mechanisms of binding. Part 3 provides interesting chapters on brain disorders in which unity breaks down. Part 4 addresses the emergence of unity with chapters on neural synchrony as well as dreaming and emotion. The chapters are written by the leading researchers in this field. Each chapter concludes with pertinent and timely references. The index section is very helpful.
Assessment:This is an excellent and extremely interesting new book on consciousness and its mechanisms. Anyone interested in this most fascinating area of research should read this book.
Editorials
From The Critics
Reviewer: Michael Joel Schrift, D.O., M.A.(University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine)Description: This new and thought-provoking book focuses on the processes involved in organizing our varied unimodal sensory experiences as well as emotion, memory, and thought into a coherent phenomena called consciousness. The book is based on a conference entitled Fourth Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Consciousness, which took place in July 2000 in Belgium. Written and edited by internationally recognized researchers in the study of consciousness, this book is a valuable contribution to this fascinating subject.
Purpose: The purpose of the book (and the conference) is an attempt to answer some big questions: How do diverse systems in the brain interact to produce a coherent experience? Are there disorders of brain function in which this coherent experience breaks down? Is this coherent experience really unified? The editors and authors have produced an excellent summary of the attempts to answer these questions.
Audience: The intended audience are researchers in the field of consciousness including cognitive neuroscientists, philosophers, and psychologists.
Features: The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 focuses on the question: What is unity? Part 2 is devoted to the issue the mechanisms of binding. Part 3 provides interesting chapters on brain disorders in which unity breaks down. Part 4 addresses the emergence of unity with chapters on neural synchrony as well as dreaming and emotion. The chapters are written by the leading researchers in this field. Each chapter concludes with pertinent and timely references. The index section is very helpful.
Assessment: This is an excellent and extremely interesting new book on consciousness and its mechanisms. Anyone interested in this most fascinating area of research should read this book.
3 Stars from Doody