Last update:
9 February 2010
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Tone of Voice and MindThe connections between intonation, emotion, cognition and consciousness
2002. x, 293 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Hardbound
– In stock
978 90 272 5173 2 / EUR 98.00 978 1 58811 275 0 / USD 147.00
Paperback
– In stock
e-Book
– Available from e-book platforms
Tone of Voice and Mind is a synthesis of findings from neurophysiology (how neurons produce subjective feeling), neuropsychology (how the human cerebral hemispheres undertake complementary information-processing), intonation studies (how the emotions are encoded in the tone of voice), and music perception (how human beings hear and feel harmony). The focus is on the psychological characteristics that distinguish us from other primate species. At a neuronal level, we are just another mammalian species, but the functional specialization of the human cerebral hemispheres has resulted in three outstanding, uniquely-human talents: language, tool-usage and music. To understand how the human brain coordinates those behaviors is to understand who we are. (Series B)
Table of contents
“Without taking hemispheric asymmetry into account, there is simply no way forward in unraveling the functioning of the human brain. Cook takes the argument a stage further in showing that the mysterious “non-dominant” hemisphere contains a 2-D representation of the affective charge (as exemplified by the phenomena of intonation and the appreciation of music) of the linguistic message that balances the syntactic structures in the dominant hemisphere. These developments in the theory of bi-hemispheric specialisation will be followed closely by all those with an interest in the evolution of the hominid brain.”
Timothy J. Crow MD, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Oxford
“Norman Cook has done it again! Some fifteen years after his puzzling and controversial book on “the brain code”, he presents his matured views on basic brain functioning in a brilliant writing on consciousness and how the brain might code emotions in musical terms. A book full of insights in a search for the underlying rules that guide the brain’s behavior.”
“This fascinating book is remarkable both in the breadth of the scientific knowledge it brings to bear on understanding the mind, and in the presentation of a “central dogma” for neuropsychology. Informative and provocative, it leaves one with a new sense of what it is to be human.”
Subject classification |
Consciousness Research