How Does the Mind Work? (The Top Books in Cognitive Science)

Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Science of the Mind – José Luis Bermúdez – 2010

A text that introduces Cognitive Science, with examples, illustrations, applications, cutting-edge research, and new developments. Explores the achievements cognitive scientists have made and the challenges in the future.

Acts of Meaning – Jerome Bruner – 1990

A critique of where Cognitive Psychology is today and its inherent limits.

Cognition and Reality – Ulric Neisser – 1976

An introduction to perception and schema, useful for designing syllabi. Overview of cognitive science.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales – Oliver Sacks -1985

An empathetic and illuminating treatise of the behaviors of people with brain abnormalities.

Proust Was a Neuroscientist – Jonah Lehrer – 2007

Lehrer was a lab technician in a neuroscience lab, he discovered that the great artists in history had insights into the human brain long before scientists did.

Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science Two-Volume Set – Margaret A. Boden – 2006

A history of cognitive science from one of its eminent practitioners.

In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind – Eric R. Kandel – 2006

Nobel Prize winner Kandel intertwines cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and molecular biology with his own quest to understand memory.

Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy – Evan Thompson – 2014

The latest neuroscience research on sleep, dreaming, and meditation is combined with Indian and Western philosophy of mind. Gives insight into the the self and its relation to the brain.

How the Mind Works – Steven Pinker – 1997

The reasons why the mind has evolved to make decisions in the way it does.

The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature – Steven Pinker – 2007

How language explains human nature, behavior, emotions, and relationships.

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid – Douglas R. Hofstadter – 1979

An exploration of ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion.

The Wisdom Paradox: How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger as Your Brain Grows Older – Elkhonon Goldberg – 2005

Evidence that shows that although the brain diminishes in some tasks as it ages, it gains in wisdom.

The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers – Daniel L. Schacter – 2001

The instances of what we know as memory failure – absent-mindedness, transience, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence – are not signs of malfunction, but suggests that these mistakes are indications that memory is functioning as designed.

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain – Maryanne Wolf – 2007

The brain is continually evolving. And it evolves with a changing environment. Writing reduced the need for memory thousands of years ago, but the modern proliferation of information and the requirements of digital culture may short-circuit some of written language’s unique contributions – with potentially profound implications for our future.

YARPP List

Related posts:

1. Law 10: Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and the Unlucky (The 48 Laws of Power)
2. Habit 1: Be Proactive (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)
3. Myth 9: Old Age is Typically Associated with Increased Dissatisfaction and Senility (50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology)
4. Chapter 5: The Psychoanalyst Kierkegaard (The Denial of Death)