The Social Brain: Sociological Foundations introduces the concept of the social brain, including a detailed conceptual model of the social brain networked in the world. The idea that our brains are social has its roots in nineteenth-century social thought and primate research initiated in the 1950s. It was introduced into the neuroscience literature in 1990 as a challenge to the traditional view of the isolated bio-medical brain, a view that still dominates the scientific, media, and public imaginations. Sal Restivo’s foundational thesis is that humans arrive on the evolutionary stage always, already, and everywhere social. We have social selves, social brains, and social genes. He argues the “I” is a grammatical illusion reflecting the myth of individualism. The unique feature of this book is the amount of space devoted to constructing the sociological scaffolding needed to understand what the author means by the social self, the social mind, and the social brain. The approach leads to new ways of thinking about socialization, consciousness, and creativity as networked phenomena. The result is a novel way of integrating the social self, the biological self, and the neurological self and erasing the classical boundaries between brain, mind, and body.

A range of empirical and theoretical perspectives on the relationship between biology and social cognition from infancy through childhood. Recent research on the developmental origins of the social mind supports the view that social cognition is present early in infancy and childhood in surprisingly sophisticated forms. Developmental psychologists have found ingenious ways to test the social abilities of infants and young children, and neuroscientists have begun to study the neurobiological mechanisms that implement and guide early social cognition. Their work suggests that, far from being unfinished adults, babies are exquisitely designed by evolution to capture relevant social information, learn, and explore their social environments. This volume offers a range of empirical and theoretical perspectives on the relationship between biology and social cognition from infancy through childhood.

Is conflict caused by an inherently hostile human nature? Are efforts to promote peaceful co-existence fated to fail? Is the story of human history destined to play out a clash of civilizations? These are the questions framing contemporary debate over diversity, immigration and multiculturalism. The Social Brain provides an entirely new psychological perspective on this debate. It argues that diversity is critical to our very survival as a species; that contact with different cultures was, and is, the essential element that fuels our creativity, innovation and growth. It asserts that diversity was the key to our intellectual evolution and will be integral to helping us tackle the most pressing social, political and economic concerns of our time. The Social Brain ties the origins of the modern mind to the evolution of human society, and provides an entirely new insight into how we can harness the ingenuity and invention that reside within us all.

Social relationships play a central role in the evolution and development of human culture and cognition. Volume 39 of the Minnesota Symposium on Child Psychology (Development of the Social Brain) adresses the ontogeny and phylogeny of the social brain from multiple perspectives and levels of analysis. The chapters in this volume shed light on shared versus unique features of social information processing across different species, and sketch out some of the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underlie such processing. A collection of chapters from distinguished contibutors offer new insights into the unique nature of human development. Flexibly and efficiently navigating the complex dynamics of social interaction remains one of the remarkable achievements of human evolution. As life in social contexts evolved, so did information processing abilities that afforded new ways of interacting with others, emerging into what we now refer to as cultural cognition or cultural practices. The primary objective of the current volume was to consider phylogenetic and ontogenetic influence on specialized social information processing capactities. The volume brings together, for the first time, distinguished research scholars to consider central themes and principles associated with the development of the social brain. Readers will take away a fresh perspective on nature of human nature.

What is consciousness and how can a brain, a mere collection of neurons, create it? In Consciousness and the Social Brain, Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano lays out an audacious new theory to account for the deepest mystery of them all. The human brain has evolved a complex circuitry that allows it to be socially intelligent. This social machinery has only just begun to be studied in detail. One function of this circuitry is to attribute awareness to others: to compute that person Y is aware of thing X. In Graziano's theory, the machinery that attributes awareness to others also attributes it to oneself. Damage that machinery and you disrupt your own awareness. Graziano discusses the science, the evidence, the philosophy, and the surprising implications of this new theory.

Cooperative learning has been demonstrated by research to be one of the most highly effective teaching strategies, but simply putting students in a group is not enough. The authors of The Power of the Social Brain see interdependent thinking as the missing piece of the collaborative puzzle. This authoritative book provides research from the neurosciences and education along with practical strategies to help groups function more effectively and thoughtfully. By adding the cognitive dimension to cooperative learning, this book will help readers apply strategies of successful group work in classrooms and professional educational learning communities.

This book is written for the nonscientific man or woman, who is interested to learn more about the brain. The focus is on the brains of people who are psychopaths as an example of a brain gone wrong. Dr. Shoemaker includes his theory of how an individual can become a psychopath, which begins in the first year of life.

An update to the classic text that links neuroscience and human behavior in the context of therapy. This groundbreaking book explores the recent revolution in psychotherapy that has brought an understanding of the social nature of people’s brains to a therapeutic context. Louis Cozolino is a master at synthesizing neuroscientific information and demonstrating how it applies to psychotherapy practice. New material on altruism, executive function, trauma, and change round out this essential book.

How the brain's architecture is related to the problems, passions, and aspirations of human beings. In contrast to this view, recent theoretical advances in brain imaging have revealed that the brain is an organ continually built and re-built by one's experience. We are now beginning to learn that many forms of psychotherapy, developed in the absence of any scientific understanding of the brain, are supported by neuroscientific findings. In fact, it could be argued that to be an effective psychotherapist these days it is essential to have some basic understanding of neuroscience. Louis Cozolino's The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, Second Edition is the perfect place to start. In a beautifully written and accessible synthesis, Cozolino illustrates how the brain's architecture is related to the problems, passions, and aspirations of human beings. As the book so elegantly argues, all forms of psychotherapy--from psychoanalysis to behavioral interventions--are successful to the extent to which they enhance change in relevant neural circuits. Beginning with an overview of the intersecting fields of neuroscience and psychotherapy, this book delves into the brain's inner workings, from basic neuronal building blocks to complex systems of memory, language, and the organization of experience. It continues by explaining the development and organization of the healthy brain and the unhealthy brain. Common problems such as anxiety, trauma, and codependency are discussed from a scientific and clinical perspective. Throughout the book, the science behind the brain's working is applied to day-to-day experience and clinical practice. Written for psychotherapists and others interested in the relationship between brain and behavior, this book encourages us to consider the brain when attempting to understand human development, mental illness, and psychological health. Fully and thoroughly updated with the many neuroscientific developments that have happened in the eight years since the publication of the first edition, this revision to the bestselling book belongs on the shelf of all practitioners.