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Information about Thought

“Think” redirects here. For other uses, see Think (disambiguation).
Neuropsychology


Topics
Brain-computer interfaces • Brain damage
Brain regions • Clinical neuropsychology
Cognitive neuroscience • Human brain
Neuroanatomy • Neurophysiology
Phrenology • Popular misconceptions
Brain functions
arousal • attention
concentration • consciousness
decision-making • executive functions
language • learning • memory
motor coordination • perception
planning • problem solving
thinking
People
Arthur L. Benton • Antnio Damsio
Kenneth Heilman • Phineas Gage
Norman Geschwind • Elkhonon Goldberg
Donald Hebb • Alexander Luria
Muriel D. Lezak • Brenda Milner
Karl Pribram • Oliver Sacks
Roger Sperry
Tests
Bender-Gestalt Test
Benton Visual Retention Test
Clinical Dementia Rating
Continuous Performance Task
Glasgow Coma Score
Hayling and Brixton tests
Lexical decision task
Mini mental state examination
Stroop task
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
Wisconsin card sorting task
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Enlarge picture
Personification of thought (Greek Εννοια) in Celsus Library in Ephesos, Turkey
Thought or thinking is a mental process which allows beings to model the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires. Words referring to similar concepts and processes include cognition, sentience, consciousness, idea, and imagination.

Thinking involves the cerebral manipulation of information, as when we form concepts, engage in problem solving, reason and make decisions. Thinking is a higher cognitive function and the analysis of thinking processes is part of cognitive psychology.

Basic process

The basic mechanics of the human brain reflect a process of pattern matching or rather recognition. In a "moment of reflection", new situations and new experiences are judged against recalled ones and judgements are made. In order to make these judgements, the intellect maintains present experience and sorts relevant past experience. It does this while keeping present and past experience distinct and separate. The intellect can mix, match, merge, sift, and sort concepts, perceptions, and experience. This process is called reasoning. Logic is the science of reasoning. The awareness of this process of reasoning is access consciousness (see philosopher Ned Block).

Conceptualization

Thinking can be modeled by a field (like a mathematical representation of an electro-magnetic field, but with each point in the field representing a point of consciousness). Patterns are formed and judgements are made within the field. Some philosophers (panpsychists/panexperientialists - see ) believe the entire field is conscious in and of itself, a consciousness field. They say consciousness creates thinking, thinking and other brain processes do not create consciousness. Other scientists (for example Bernard Baars) think of it as a workspace. Some philosophers (for example Thomas Nagel) have said they do not have a clue as to how we are aware of our thinking.

A thought can be said to be whatever arises in the dualistic mind. A dualistic mind is one in which the one from which the thought arises considers himself to be separate from other forms. A thought may be an idea, an image, a sound, a smell, a touch or even an emotional feeling that arises from the brain.

Aids to thinking

  1. Use of models, symbols, diagrams and pictures.
  2. Use of abstraction to simplify the effort of thinking.
  3. Use of metasyntactic variables to simplify the effort of naming.
  4. Use of iteration and recursion to converge on a concept.
  5. Limitation of attention to aid concentration and focus on a concept. Use of peace and quiet to aid concentration.
  6. Goal setting and goal revision. Simply letting the concept percolate in the subconscious, and waiting for the concept to re-surface.
  7. Talking with like-minded people. Resorting to communication with others, if this is allowed.
  8. Working backward from the goal.
  9. Desire for learning.

Pitfalls

  1. Fads.
  2. Self-delusions: inability to confront relevant issues (roadblocks).

See also

References

  • Eric Baum (2004). What is Thought, Chapter Two: The Mind is a Computer Program. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-02548-5

External Links

For thinking, see Thought.

Think may refer to:

In music

  • Think (Aretha Franklin song), a 1968 song recorded by Aretha Franklin
  • Think ("5" Royales song), a 1957 song recorded by The "5" Royales and later covered by James Brown and The Famous Flames

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Neuropsychology is an interdisciplinary branch of psychology and neuroscience that aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relate to specific psychological processes and overt behaviors.
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A brain-computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain-machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a human or animal brain (or brain cell culture) and an external device.
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Brain damage or brain injury is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells.

Brain damage may occur due to a wide range of conditions, illnesses, injuries, and as a result of iatrogenesis.
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Clinical neuropsychology is a sub-specialty of clinical psychology that specialises in the diagnostic assessment and treatment of patients with brain injury or neurocognitive deficits.
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Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological mechanisms underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes and their behavioral manifestations.
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The human brain controls the central nervous system (CNS), by way of the cranial nerves and spinal cord, the peripheral nervous system (PNS) and regulates virtually all human activity.
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Neuroanatomy is the branch of anatomy that studies the anatomical organization of the nervous system. In vertebrate animals, the routes that the myriad nerves take from the brain to the rest of the body (or "periphery"), and the internal structure of the brain in particular, are
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Neurophysiology is a part of physiology. Neurophysiology is the study of nervous system function. Primarily, it is connected with neurophysiology and also to with neurobiology, psychology, neurology, clinical neurophysiology, electrophysiology, ethology, neuroanatomy, cognitive
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Phrenology (from Greek: φρήν, phrēn, "mind"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is a theory which claims to be able to determine character, personality traits and criminality on the basis of the shape of the head (i.e.
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Wikipedia articles related to Brain Function

  • Visual system
  • Auditory system
  • Olfactory system
  • Gustatory system
  • Somatosensory system
  • Visual perception
  • Motor cortex
  • Broca's area (aka Language Area)
  • Lateralization of brain function

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Arousal is a physiological and psychological state of being awake. It involves the activation of the reticular activating system in the brain stem, the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system, leading to increased heart rate and blood pressure and a condition of
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Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things. Examples include listening carefully to what someone is saying while ignoring other conversations in the room (the cocktail party effect) or listening to a
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Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things. Examples include listening carefully to what someone is saying while ignoring other conversations in the room (the cocktail party effect) or listening to a
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Consciousness is a characteristic of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment.
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Decision making is the cognitive process leading to the selection of a course of action among variations. Every decision making process produces a final choice. It can be an action or an opinion. It begins when we need to do something but know not what.
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Executive functions is a term synonymous with cognitive control, and used by psychologists and neuroscientists to describe a loosely defined collection of brain processes whose role is to guide thought and behaviour in accordance with internally generated goals or plans.
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In the philosophy of language, a natural language (or ordinary language) is a language that is spoken, written, or signed (visually or tactilely) by humans for general-purpose communication, as distinguished from formal languages (such as computer-programming
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Learning is the acquisition and development of memories and behaviors, including skills, knowledge, understanding, values, and wisdom. It is the goal of education, and the product of experience.
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In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve information. Traditional studies of memory began in the realms of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing the memory.
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Gross motor coordination addresses the gross motor skills: walking, running, climbing, jumping, crawling, lifting one's head, sitting up, etc.

Fine motor coordination
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perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. It is a task far more complex than was imagined in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was proclaimed that building perceiving machines would take about a decade, but, needless to say,
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For planning in AI, see .


Planning is both the organizational process of creating and maintaining a plan; and the psychological process of thinking about the activities required to create a desired future on some scale.
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Problem solving forms part of thinking. Considered the most complex of all intellectual functions, problem solving has been defined as higher-order cognitive process that requires the modulation and control of more routine or fundamental skills (Goldstein & Levin, 1987).
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Thought or thinking is a mental process which allows beings to model the world, and so to deal with it effectively according to their goals, plans, ends and desires.
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Arthur Lester Benton, Ph.D., (October 16, 1909 - December 27, 2006) was a neuropsychologist and Emeritus Professor of Neurology and Psychology at the University of Iowa.

He received his A.B. from Oberlin College in 1931, his A.M.
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Kenneth M. Heilman is an American behavioral neurologist.

Biography

Early Life and Career

Kenneth Heilman was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He attended and graduated from medical school at the University of Virginia in 1963.
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Phineas P. Gage (1823 – May 21, 1860) was a railroad construction foreman who suffered a traumatic brain injury when a tamping iron accidentally passed through his skull, damaging the frontal lobes of his brain.
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Norman Geschwind can be considered the father of modern behavioral neurology in America. He was mentor to the cadre of behavioral neurologists who would shape the subspecialty for the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Dr.
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Elkhonon Goldberg (1946) is a neuropsychologist and cognitive neuroscientist.

Biography

Elkhonon Golderg was born in Riga, Latvia in 1946, studied at Moscow State University with the great neuropsychologist Alexander Luria and moved to the United States in 1974.
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