Explore the vast range of titles available.

A scientist integrates evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and more to explore the development and workings of human societies. \"There is no good reason why human societies should not be described and explained with the same precision and success as the rest of nature.\" Thus argues evolutionary psychologist Pascal Boyer in this uniquely innovative book. Integrating recent insights from evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology, economics, and other fields, Boyer offers precise models of why humans engage in social behaviors such as forming families, tribes, and nations, or creating gender roles. In fascinating, thought-provoking passages, he explores questions such as: Why is there conflict between groups? Why do people believe low-value information such as rumors? Why are there religions? What is social justice? What explains morality? Boyer provides a new picture of cultural transmission that draws on the pragmatics of human communication, the constructive nature of memory in human brains, and human motivation for group formation and cooperation. \"Cool and captivating…It will change forever your understanding of society and culture.\"—Dan Sperber, co-author of  The Enigma of Reason \"It is highly recommended…to researchers firmly settled within one of the many single disciplines in question. Not only will they encounter a wealth of information from the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences, but the book will also serve as an invitation to look beyond the horizons of their own fields.\"—Eveline Seghers,  Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture

This book explores whether the mental order corresponds to the order of structures, events, and processes in one part of the neural order, namely, the cerebral cortex. For clarity and simplicity, this means the search for a spatial and temporal order in the cerebral cortex that matches the cognitive order in every respect. A change or difference in the cortical order corresponds to a change or difference in the mental order. The principal aim of this book is to map cognitive networks onto cortical networks. It has implications for cognitive neuroscience, neurophysiology, neurobiology, neuroimaging, neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry, cognitive psychology, and linguistics. The book will also interest students in all the disciplines of neuroscience and can be used as a text or collateral reading in courses on systems neuroscience, behavioral neuroscience, cognitive science, network modeling, physiological psychology, and linguistics.

This book lays out the reasons why we should study cognitive development in adulthood, and presents the history, latest data, and results from the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS), which now extends to over forty-five years. The SLS is organized around five questions: does intelligence change uniformly throughout adulthood, or are there different life-course-ability patterns? At what age and at what magnitude can decrement in ability be reliably detected? What are the patterns and magnitude of generational differences? What accounts for individual differences in age-related change in adulthood? Can the intellectual decline that increases with age be reversed by educational intervention? Based on work on the SLS, this book presents a conceptual model. The model represents this book's author's view on the factors that influence cognitive development throughout the human lifespan, and provides a rationale for the various influences that have been investigated — genetic factors, early and current family environment, life styles, the experience of chronic disease, and various personality attributes. The data in this volume include the 1998 longitudinal cycle of the SLS. In light of both new data and revised analyses, psychometric and neuropsychological assessments have been linked in long-term data to aid in the early identification of risk for dementia in later life. The book also presents new data and concludes on the impact of personality on cognition. It includes correlation matrices and web-access information for select data sets.

Neuropsychological screening tools for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) have been widely used. However, to date, their sensitivity and specificity still remain unsatisfied. This study aims to investigate whether spatial memory can discriminate MCI better than neuropsychological screening tools. A total of 56 healthy older adults and 36 older adults with MCI participated in this study; they performed a spatial cognitive task based on virtual reality (SCT-VR), the Korean version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA-K), and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised Block Design Test (WAIS-BDT). The discriminant power was compared between the SCT-VR and the MoCA-K, and the reliability and validity of the SCT-VR were analyzed. The spatial memory, assessed by the SCT-VR, showed better sensitivity and specificity (sensitivity: 0.944; specificity: 0.964) than the MoCA-K (sensitivity: 0.857; specificity: 0.746). The test-retest reliability of the SCT-VR was relatively high (ICCs: 0.982, p < 0.001) and the concurrent validity of the SCT-VR with the MoCA-K (r = −0.587, p < 0.001) and the WAIS-BDT (r = −0.594, p < 0.001) was statistically significant. These findings shed light on the importance of spatial memory as a behavioral marker of MCI. The ecologically validated spatial memory tasks based on VR need to be investigated by neuroscientific studies in the future.

Hearing loss is a common feature in human aging. It has been argued that dysfunctions in central processing are important contributing factors to hearing loss during older age. Aging also has well documented consequences for neural structure and function, but it is not clear how these effects interact with those that arise as a consequence of hearing loss. This paper reviews the effects of aging and adult-onset hearing loss in the structure and function of cortical auditory regions. The evidence reviewed suggests that aging and hearing loss result in atrophy of cortical auditory regions and stronger engagement of networks involved in the detection of salient events, adaptive control and re-allocation of attention. These cortical mechanisms are engaged during listening in effortful conditions in normal hearing individuals. Therefore, as a consequence of aging and hearing loss, all listening becomes effortful and cognitive load is constantly high, reducing the amount of available cognitive resources. This constant effortful listening and reduced cognitive spare capacity could be what accelerates cognitive decline in older adults with hearing loss.

This study was conducted to evaluate the protective effect of Juglans regia (walnut, Gimcheon 1ho cultivar, GC) on high-fat diet (HFD)-induced cognitive dysfunction in C57BL/6 mice. The main physiological compounds of GC were identified as pedunculagin/casuariin isomer, strictinin, tellimagrandin I, ellagic acid-O-pentoside, and ellagic acid were identified using UPLC Q-TOF/MS analysis. To evaluate the neuro-protective effect of GC, 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT), 2′,7′-dichlorodihydrofluorecein diacetate (DCF-DA) analysis were conducted in H2O2 and high glucose-induced neuronal PC12 cells and hippocampal HT22 cells. GC presented significant cell viability and inhibition of reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. GC ameliorated behavioral and memory dysfunction through Y-maze, passive avoidance, and Morris water maze tests. In addition, GC reduced white adipose tissue (WAT), liver fat mass, and serum dyslipidemia. To assess the inhibitory effect of antioxidant system deficit, lipid peroxidation, ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP), and advanced glycation end products (AGEs) were conducted. Administration of GC protected the antioxidant damage against HFD-induced diabetic oxidative stress. To estimate the ameliorating effect of GC, acetylcholine (ACh) level, acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity, and expression of AChE and choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) were conducted, and the supplements of GC suppressed the cholinergic system impairment. Furthermore, GC restored mitochondrial dysfunction by regulating the mitochondrial ROS production and mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) levels in cerebral tissues. Finally, GC ameliorated cerebral damage by synergically regulating the protein expression of the JNK signaling and apoptosis pathway. These findings suggest that GC could provide a potential functional food source to improve diabetic cognitive deficits and neuronal impairments.

The number of people with dementia is increasing each year, and early detection allows for early intervention and treatment. Since conventional screening methods are time-consuming and expensive, a simple and inexpensive screening is expected. We created a standardized intake questionnaire with thirty questions in five categories and used machine learning to categorize older adults with moderate and mild dementia and mild cognitive impairment, based on speech patterns. To evaluate the feasibility of the developed interview items and the accuracy of the classification model based on acoustic features, 29 participants (7 males and 22 females) aged 72 to 91 years were recruited with the approval of the University of Tokyo Hospital. The MMSE results showed that 12 participants had moderate dementia with MMSE scores of 20 or less, 8 participants had mild dementia with MMSE scores between 21 and 23, and 9 participants had MCI with MMSE scores between 24 and 27. As a result, Mel-spectrogram generally outperformed MFCC in terms of accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score in all classification tasks. The multi-classification using Mel-spectrogram achieved the highest accuracy of 0.932, while the binary classification of moderate dementia and MCI group using MFCC achieved the lowest accuracy of 0.502. The FDR was generally low for all classification tasks, indicating a low rate of false positives. However, the FNR was relatively high in some cases, indicating a higher rate of false negatives.

Diet modification may contribute to the prevention of age-related cognitive decline. The association between dairy product consumption and cognitive function in older people remains unknown. We investigated whether cheese intake is associated with lower cognitive function (LCF) in community-dwelling older adults. This cross-sectional study included 1503 adults aged over 65 years. The analyzed data were obtained through face-to-face interviews and functional ability measurement. Cognitive function was assessed using the mini-mental state examination (MMSE), and a score ≤23 was defined as LCF. The prevalence of LCF was 4.6%, and this group had smaller calf circumference, slower usual walking speed, and a more frequent history of anemia than subjects with MMSE scores >23. After adjusting for confounding factors, logistic regression analysis revealed cheese intake (odds ratio (OR) = 0.404, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.198–0.824), age (OR = 1.170, 95% CI = 1.089–1.256), usual walking speed (OR = 0.171, 95% CI = 0.062–0.472) and calf circumference (OR = 0.823, 95% CI = 0.747–0.908) to be significant factors associated with LCF. Although the present study was an analysis of cross-sectional data of Japanese community-dwelling older adults, the results suggest that cheese intake is inversely associated with LCF.

Posterior Quadrant Disconnection is a surgical technique designed to suppress seizure propagation while preserving motor and sensory functions in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy. Although seizure outcomes following this procedure have been reported, detailed evaluations of its impact on higher cognitive functions remain limited. This study aimed to assess the long-term seizure and cognitive outcomes following PQD in the non-dominant hemisphere, thereby evaluating the efficacy and safety of the procedure. In this case, the patient with drug-resistant epilepsy underwent preoperative evaluation using stereo electroencephalography (SEEG) to identify seizure onset zones and functional mapping related to visuospatial cognition. Following this assessment, PQD was performed. Postoperative outcomes were monitored over a 2-years period, focusing on seizure control and higher cognitive function. The patient achieved Engel class I status postoperatively, indicating complete seizure cessation. While transient hemispatial neglect was observed immediately after surgery, gradual improvement was noted over time. Furthermore, visual memory and cognitive functions showed a tendency to improve, and there were no significant declines in facial recognition or scene recognition abilities. These findings suggest that PQD can effectively improve seizure outcomes while minimizing long-term impacts on cognitive functions. This case highlights the potential of PQD to offer substantial seizure control with limited permanent effects on higher cognitive functions. By providing valuable insights into the safety and efficacy of PQD in the non-dominant hemisphere, this study underscores its viability as a treatment option for selected cases of drug-resistant epilepsy.

The field of cognitive modeling has progressed beyond modeling cognition in the context of simple laboratory tasks and begun to attack the problem of modeling cognition in more complex, realistic environments, such as those studied by researchers in the field of human factors. The problems that the human-factors community is tackling focus on modeling certain problems of communication and control that arise in the integration of implicit and explicit knowledge, emotion, and cognition, and the cognitive system with the external environment. These problems must be addressed in order to produce integrated cognitive models of moderately complex tasks. Architectures of cognition in these tasks focus on the control of a central system, which includes control of the central processor itself, initiation of functional processes, such as visual search and memory retrieval, and harvesting the results of functional processes. Because the control of the central system is conceptually different from the internal control required by individual functional processes, a complete architecture of cognition must incorporate two types of theories of control: type 1 theories of the structure, functionality, and operation of the controller, and type 2 theories of the internal control of functional processes, how, and what they communicate to the controller. This volume presents, for both types of theories, the current state of the art, as well as contrasts among current approaches to human-performance models.