Chris Frith – författare

Schizophrenia is the archetypal form of madness. Schizophrenia is a common disorder and has a devastating effect on sufferers and their families-patients typically hear voices in their heads and hold bizarre beliefs. The schizophrenic patient presented to the public in sensational press reports and lurid films bears little resemblance to reality of the illness. This book describes what schizophrenia is really like, how the illness progresses, and the treatments that have been applied. It also summarizes the most up-to-date knowledge available about the biological bases of this disorder. Finally it attempts to give some idea of what it is like to have schizophrenia and what this disorder tells us about the relationship between mind and brain.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

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? Is conscious experience really unified at all?In recent years, these questions have been addressed by researchers in many fields, including, neurophysiologists and computational modellers, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, and philosophy. With chapters from some of the leading thinkers on consciousness, this is a thought-provoking book that attempts to answer some of the big questions.Contributors include - Chris Frith, David Chalmers, Guilio Tononi, Anne Treisman, Andrew Young, Sydney Shoemaker, Glyn Humphreys, Rodney Cotterill, Zoltan Dienes, Susan Hurley, Randall O'Reilly, Andreas Engel, Pierre Perruchet, Catherine Tallon-Baudry, and Francisco Varela.

Why are humans so clever? The 'Social intelligence' hypothesis explores the idea that this cleverness has evolved through the increasing complexity of social groups. Our ability to understand and control nature is a by-product of our ability to understand the mental states of others and to use this knowledge to co-operate or deceive. These abilities have not emerged out of the blue. They can be found in many social animals that co-operate and compete with one another, birds as well as mammals.This book brings together contributions from an impressive list of authorities in the field, appropriately concluding with a chapter by Nick Humphrey (one of the pioneers in this field). This volume examines social intelligence in many different animal species and explores its development, evolution and the brain systems upon which it depends. Better understanding and further development of social intelligence is critical for the future of the human race and the world that we inhabit. Our problems will not be solved by mere cleverness, but by increased social co-operation.

The turn of the twenty-first century has seen a new era in the cognitive and brain sciences that allows us to address the age-old question of what it means to be human from a whole new range of different perspectives. Our knowledge of the workings of the human brain increases day by day and so does our understanding of the extended, distributed, embodied and culturally mediated character of the human mind. The problem is that these major ways of thinking about human cognition and the threads of evidence that they carry with them often seem to diverge, rather than confront one another. 'The Sapient Mind' channels the huge emerging analytic potential of current neuroscientific research in the direction of a common integrated programme targeting the big picture of human cognitive evolution. Up to now, working in isolation, both archaeology and neuroscience have made a number of important contributions to the study of human intelligence. Archaeology, for instance has given us a good idea about where, and an approximate idea about when, Homo sapiens appeared - in Africa somewhere between 100 000 and 200 000 years ago. Neuroscience, on the other hand, has given us a good indication about where in the human brain modern human capacities (e.g. language, symbolic capacity, representational ability, theory of mind (ToM), causal belief, intentionality, sense of selfhood) can be identified and the possible neural networks and cognitive mechanisms that support them. The challenge facing us then is how do we put all these different facets and threads of evidence about the human condition back together again?This book presents the work of leading researchers from archaeology and the brain sciences, showing how a new framework that integrates two hithero isolated disciplines can provide us with a much deeper, more informative, account of where we came from, and why we developed as we did.

Written by one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, Making Up the Mind is the first accessible account of experimental studies showing how the brain creates our mental world. Uses evidence from brain imaging, psychological experiments and studies of patients to explore the relationship between the mind and the brainDemonstrates that our knowledge of both the mental and physical comes to us through models created by our brainShows how the brain makes communication of ideas from one mind to another possible

'Charming and addictively accessible' STEVEN PINKER'Original, authoritative and beautiful' BRIAN COX'The most wonderful adventure' ROBIN INCEA brilliantly illustrated journey through the wonders and mysteries of the human brain – from a renowned husband-and-wife team of cognitive neuroscientists.Professors and husband-and-wife team Uta and Chris Frith have pioneered major studies of brain disorders throughout their nearly fifty-year career. In Two Heads, their distinguished careers serve as a prism through which they share the compelling story of the birth of neuroscience and their paradigm-shifting discoveries across areas as wide-ranging as autism and schizophrenia research, and new frontiers of social cognition including diversity, prejudice, confidence, collaboration and empathy.Working with their son Alex Frith and artist Daniel Locke, they examine the way that neuroscientific research is now focused on the fact we are a social species, whose brains have evolved to work cooperatively. What happens when people gather in groups? How do people behave when they’re in pairs – either pitted against each other or working together? Is it better to surround yourself with people who are similar to yourself, or different? And, are two heads really better than one?Highly original and ingeniously illustrated, Two Heads provides an expansive understanding of how our brains work, and how they work together.

Humans, like other primates, are intensely social creatures. One of the main functions of our brains is to enable us to be as skilful in social interactions as we are in our interactions with the physical world. Any differences between human brains and those of our nearest relatives, the great apes, are likely to be linked to our unique achievements in social interaction and communication rather than our motor or perceptual skills. Unique to humans is the ability to mentalise (or mind read), that is to perceive and communicate mental states, such as beliefs and desires. A key problem facing neuroscience is to uncover the biological mechanisms underlying our ability to read other minds and to show how these mechanisms evolved. To solve this problem we need to do experiments in which people (or animals) interact with one another rather than behaving in isolation. Such experiments are now being conducted in increasing numbers and many of the leading exponents of such experiments have contributed to this volume.'The Neuroscience of Social Interactions' will be an important step in uncovering the biological mechanisms underlying social interactions - undoubtedly one of the major programmes for neuroscience in the twenty-first century.