Abstract
The human brain has fascinated mankind for generations, but technological improvements have only recently enabled the neural substrates of mental processes to be properly understood. This book explains current cognitive neuroscience models of normal brain functioning, with a particular emphasis on connectionism, and explores how defects in connected neural networks might lead to the abnormal behaviour demonstrated in neurological, neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders.
Section I focuses on the history of cognitive neuroscience and explains commonly used principles, such as localisation of function and double dissociation, so that one might better understand the direction in which neuroscience has progressed. In a theme present throughout this book, limitations to our current understanding are explained so that the reader can independently assess the adequacy of current thinking. Section II provides a fascinating overview of the neural circuits involved in perception, attention, language, memory, action selection and state regulation, and explains how abnormal interactions in such neural circuits might lead to abnormal behaviour. Refreshingly, the author does not imitate the arbitrary boundaries between brain disorders that are found in clinical practice and explains abnormal behaviour in neurological, neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders as arising from defects within the same neural framework. This book ends with an intriguing analysis of how consciousness might be produced by the ‘Default Mode Network’, although it emphasises the lack of a definitive understanding into one of the most important questions in science.
Professor Pennington justifies his thesis with an up-to-date analysis of the current research base; references are made throughout and listed at the end of the book. This, along with the end-of-chapter learning exercises and list of online resources, provides the reader with a strong foundation for further reading. Overall, this book is phenomenally well written and summarises a vast array of information in a succinct and extremely readable manner. It is therefore possible to understand principles without being overwhelmed by detail, as is so often the case in neuroscience texts. I would recommend this book unreservedly to students, researchers or practitioners interested in how the brain works and how its dysfunction might lead to abnormal behaviour in clinical disorders.