Patrick Haggard – författare

Agency has two meanings in psychology and neuroscience. It can refer to one's capacity to affect the world and act in line with one's goals and desires--this is the objective aspect of agency. But agency can also refer to the subjective experience of controlling one's actions, or how it feels to achieve one's goals or affect the world. This subjective aspect is known as the sense of agency, and it is an important part of what makes us human. Interest in the sense of agency has exploded since the early 2000s, largely because scientists have learned that it can be studied objectively through analyses of human judgment, behavior, and the brain. This book brings together some of the world's leading researchers to give structure to this nascent but rapidly growing field. The contributors address questions such as: What role does agency play in the sense of self? Is agency based on predicting outcomes of actions? And what are the links between agency and motivation?Recent work on the sense of agency has been markedly interdisciplinary. The chapters collected here combine ideas and methods from fields as diverse as engineering, psychology, neurology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind, making the book a valuable resource for any student or researcher interested in action, volition, and exploring how mind and brain are organized.

The scientific study of the human mind and brain has come of age with the advent of technologically advanced methods for imaging brain structure and activity in health and disease, plus computational theories of cognition. These advances are leading to sophisticated new accounts for how mental processes are implemented in the human brain, but they also raise new challenges.Mental Processes in the Human Brain provides an integrative overview of the rapid advances and future challenges in understanding the neurobiological basis of mental processes that are characteristically (and in some cases, perhaps uniquely) human, including: language; thought; understanding of others; attention; planning and decision-making; emotion; memory; prediction; and awareness itself. The book also presents the latest insights into how these various processes can break down after brain injury. With chapters from some of leading figures in the brain sciences, this book will be essential for all those in the cognitive and brain sciences.