Can the psychodynamics of the mind be correlated with neurodynamic processes in the brain? The book revisits this important question - one that scientists and psychoanalysts have been asking for more than a century. Freud envisioned that the separation between the two approaches was just a temporary limitation that future scientific progress would overcome. Yet, only recently have scientific developments shown that he was right. Technological and methodological innovations in neuroscience allow unprecedented insight into the neurobiological basis of topics such as empathy, embodiment and emotional conflict. As these domains have traditionally been the preserve of psychoanalysis and other fields within the humanities, rapprochement between disciplines seems more important than ever. Recent advances in neurodynamics and computational neuroscience also reveal richer and more dynamic brain-mind relations than those previously sketched by cognitive sciences. Are we therefore ready to correlate some neuroscientific concepts with psychoanalytic ones? Can the two disciplines share a common conceptual framework despite their different epistemological perspectives? The book brings together internationally renowned contributors from the fields of Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience and Neuro-psychoanalysis to address these questions. The volume is organised in five clear sections, Motivation; Emotion; Conscious and Unconscious Processes; Cognitive Control; and Development of the Self. With a range of chapters written by leading figures in their fields, it gives the reader a strong flavour of how much has already been achieved between the disciplines and how much more lies ahead. This important new book reveals the intrinsic challenges and tensions of this interdisciplinary endeavour and emphasises the need for a shared language and new emerging fields such as Psychodynamic Neuroscience.

From the Couch to the Lab: Trends in Psychodynamic Neuroscience

Medical Books

Conway, Martin A.

Fotopoulou, Aikaterini

Pfaff, Donald

Medicine

Oxford University Press

How scientific studies of human behavior can be replicated with the consistency and rigor characteristic of the physical sciences, yielding scientific “laws.”\nIn Laws of Human Behavior, Donald Pfaff and Sandra Sherman argue that many behavioral and neural discoveries—verified over the years through precise, reliable measurement—are tantamount to “laws,” comparable in rigor and replicability to physical laws such as gravity and the second law of thermodynamics. Drawing on research in areas including psychophysics, various types of conditioning and habit formation, and even social behaviors, they show how important aspects of the behavioral sciences contribute to laws that should be celebrated now. Responding to what some commentators have called a crisis in reliability, the authors make a compelling case for the progress that experimental work in areas, formerly labeled as “soft” science, has achieved.\nThe book is international in scope. References range from the early nineteenth-century work of Weber to papers published in 2023. In particular, the authors cite important accomplishments in the behavioral and neural sciences of the past few decades that support the characterization of these sciences as “exact.” Each chapter of the book has three parts: examples of the law’s manifestations in everyday life, examples of the laboratory science that supports the law, and neurobiological results that further support the validity of the law. The book also offers clues for understanding where the field of behavioral science is headed. The authors intend for the book to be accessible to interested nonscientists.

Laws of Human Behavior: Steps Toward Hard Science

Science & Math

SHERMAN, SANDRA

Biological Sciences

The MIT Press

Arousal is fundamental to all cognition. It is intuitively obvious, absolutely necessary, but what exactly is it? In Brain Arousal and Information Theory, Donald Pfaff presents a daring perspective on this long-standing puzzle. Pfaff argues that, beneath our mental functions and emotional dispositions, a primitive neuronal system governs arousal. Employing the simple but powerful framework of information theory, Pfaff revolutionizes our understanding of arousal systems in the brain.
Starting with a review of the neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, and neurochemical components of arousal, Pfaff asks us to look at the gene networks and neural pathways underlying the brain’s arousal systems much as a design engineer would contemplate information systems. This allows Pfaff to postulate that there is a bilaterally symmetric, bipolar system universal among mammals that readies the animal or the human being to respond to stimuli, initiate voluntary locomotion, and react to emotional challenges. Applying his hypothesis to heightened states of arousal―sex and fear―Pfaff shows us how his theory opens new scientific approaches to understanding the structure of brain arousal.
A major synthesis of disparate data by a preeminent neuroscientist, Brain Arousal and Information Theory challenges current thinking about cognition and behavior. Whether you subscribe to Pfaff’s theory or not, this book will stimulate debate about the nature of arousal itself.

Brain Arousal and Information Theory: Neural and Genetic Mechanisms

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Harvard University Press

Throughout his remarkable career, Donald Pfaff has demonstrated that by choosing problems and methods with care, biologists can study the molecular mechanisms of brains more complex than those of fruit flies, snails, roundworms, and other invertebrates. His half century in the lab, starting with his discovery of hormone receptors in the brains of mammals and leading to the first detailed account of a neural circuit for mammalian behavior, puts him in a unique position to survey the origins and development of behavioral neurobiology and the current state of research. How the Vertebrate Brain Regulates Behavior offers a close-up, conversational perspective on scientific struggles and successes throughout a fifty-year quest to understand how behavior is regulated in a complex organism.
In graduate school, when Pfaff expressed a desire to study behavioral regulation, his advisor suggested focusing on hormones. Pfaff’s investigation into the hormonal basis of female sexual behavior in laboratory rats led him to a comprehensive appreciation of how hormone-dependent neurons work through neural circuits to produce discrete behaviors among all vertebrates. This breakthrough, along with other researchers’ findings, established a link between molecular biology and neuroscience that opened up a fruitful new field of inquiry.
Pfaff’s approach is to focus on one solvable problem and explore it from many angles. He begins with a single observed behavior and traces its regulation through a series of biological mechanisms―from hormones to genes to neural circuits. Pfaff’s relentless pursuit of his goals continues to inspire neuroscientists today.

How the Vertebrate Brain Regulates Behavior: Direct from the Lab

Politics & Social Sciences

Anthropology

What are the physical paths towards consciousness? How do humans transition out of deep anesthesia, deep sleep, or traumatic brain injury? This book presents a new argument that expands past theories centered on the cerebral cortex, and instead emphasizes the longitudinally-integrated brainstem systems that are essential to the mechanism of consciousness. The workings of these vertical pathways that 'wake up the brain' are examined in neurobiological and molecular detail. Mirroring the evolution of this system from fish to humans, chapters in the book move from hindbrain to forebrain and from animal brain to human brain, developing the unified approach involved in the brain arousal mechanism. Considering consciousness through an array of neuronal structures, this book provides a new physical explanation of the phenomenon. Written for neurologists, neuroscientists, psychologists and psychiatrists, the book's succinct and readable tone means it is also suitable for readers interested in the workings of the brain.

How Brain Arousal Mechanisms Work: Paths Toward Consciousness

Cambridge University Press

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