Psychology Press Category Specificity in Brain and Mind (Brain, Behaviour and Cognition)

Product Description Some of the most fascinating deficits in neuropsychology concern the failure to recognise common objects from one semantic category, such as living things, when there is no such difficulty with objects from another, such as non-living things. Over the past twenty years, numerous cases of these 'category specific' recognition and naming problems have been documented and several competing theories have been developed to account for the patients' disorders. Category Specificity in Brain and Mind draws together the neuropsychological literature on category-specific impairments, with research on how children develop knowledge about different categories, functional brain imaging work and computational models of object recognition and semantic memory. The chapters are written by internationally leading psychologists and neuroscientists and the result is a review of the most up-to-date thinking on how knowledge about different categories is acquired and organized in the mind, and where it is represented in the human brain. The text will be essential reading for advanced undergraduates and researchers in the field of category specificity and a rich source of information for neuropsychologists, experimental and developmental psychologists, cognitive scientists and philosophers. Review The book makes enthralling reading. Expert readers will enjoy plunging their teeth into the complex realm of category-specific impairment. The review section of the book will provide a stimulus for students whose knowledge on the topic is just dawning. - Sergio Della Sala, University of Aberdeen, UK A timely illustration of cognitive neuroscience at its best - integrating empirical and theoretical developments across a broad range of research methods and theoretical perspectives towards a single issue about knowledge representation in the cognitive system and its implementation in the brain. - E.C. Leek, University of Wales, Bangor