After Phrenology: Neural Reuse and the Interactive Brain

Michael Anderson delivers an expert treatise on the philosophy of neuroscience. Topics include embodied cognition, ecological psychology, neural plasticity, and evolutionary neuroscience. This book provides a clear framework for how to approach neuroscience and neuropsychology, and is insightful and exciting from cover to cover.

This book makes many excellent critical points in regards to current models and analyses of neuroimaging data. There can be no doubt that within limitations, cortical fields may be reused for several related tasks. However, in neglecting the fundamental importance of cortical parcellation based on myeloarchitecture and cytoarchitecture (neither of which appear in the book's index), Anderson repeats the mistakes. of many of his generation. These anatomical cortical specializations, which are increasing observable in living human brain, surely act as constraints on the scope of neural reuse.

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