Conscious Mind, Resonant Brain: How Each Brain Makes a Mind

I strongly recommend the book, Conscious Mind, Resonant Brain, by Dr. Stephen Grossberg, to anyone who is interested in learning more about how the human brain learns, perceives and recognizes sensory stimuli, and supports a state of consciousness. Dr. Grossberg has studied brain function for almost 70 years. This book describes his Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART), which doubles as a model to describe how the brain attends to, processes, and recognizes objects and events in its environment and also as a model that may be used for the design of circuits and computers underlying artificial intelligence and neural networks. Of note, the brain-based hypotheses associated with ART have been supported by a wealth of psychophysical and neurobiological research studies as well as mathematical modeling, and ART-based computer systems have largely outperformed competitor approaches such as deep learning networks.The further I have read Dr. Grossberg’s book, the more astonished I am with the expansiveness of his knowledge. He has acquired an exceptional depth of knowledge in so many areas (e.g., mathematics, psychology, anatomy, physiology, neuroscience, logic, engineering, computer science, etc.), and he has tied it all together in an unprecedented way to explain perception, cognition, consciousness, learning, and many other neuroscience concepts that have largely evaded the scientific community for many years. He does an excellent job in explaining these complex topics in a way that is easy to understand for those without a strong background in mathematics, science, or engineering. His passion for his body of work is obvious from cover to cover. I am beyond impressed with his work and this book, and I highly recommend it without reservation.

This book describes what is undoubtedly the most complete and unified body of work on how the brain produces behavior, perception, and consciousness. It brings together, for the first time, over 50 years of work led by one of the greatest thinkers in brain science, Stephen Grossberg. What makes this work stand out is Grossberg’s vision, first formulated at a time when cognitive theories were expressed through analogies to computer programs, that the brain is best understood as a dynamical system of mutually interacting elements. This led to a strategy for expressing hypotheses using the language of non-linear differential equations, describing neurons and their interactions, constrained by anatomical data on connectivity, physiological data on their responses in different experiments, and behavioral data on how the entire system produces complex functions. This strategy led him and his colleagues to develop models of learning, visual processing, object recognition, decision-making, motor control, navigation, etc. predicting countless neuroscientific results that have since been confirmed. So much of what we think we’ve discovered in recent years was anticipated by Grossberg’s models, and expressed with a scholarship and depth of thinking of which few others would be capable. And now, finally, all of this work is described in one place, in this book. And the timing is perfect. It is finally becoming generally accepted that the brain is best understood as a dynamical system, and this book shows just how powerful are the insights that can be made from that perspective.In this book, the casual reader will find an engaging story of how to think about one of the greatest mysteries in science and how to understand one’s own thoughts and perceptions. For the expert, it offers a clear overview of key take-home messages as well as launching points into the vast literature describing specific models and the experiments that inspire and test them. It reminds us all of just how amazing and complex are our brains, but emphasizes that despite that complexity, they can ultimately be understood.

This book is phenomenal. I highly recommend it to anybody with an interest in neuroscience. I have worked in the area of neuroscience for a few years, so I read this book with some knowledge of neuroscience. Nevertheless, I find each chapter packed with new insights and useful information. Chapters are self-sufficient, so you can read them more or less independently. I feel a sense of loss that I have not been familiar with the work of Prof Grossberg any sooner. But as they say, better late than never. And for those with no knowledge of neuroscience, I highly recommend it, since it will give you not only the knowledge but also the insight that many other books would not. It can be used as a textbook, but it is much more than just a textbook. It summarises decades of research and original thoughts from a brilliant scientist.

A well thought out book that's should be recognized throughout the scientific community.. will have lasting implications for neuroscience and how mind comes from body/brain dynamics..

With Conscious Mind Resonant Brain, Stephen Grossberg has created a masterpiece. Each of its 700+ pages sizzle with vital scholarship, resonant of a passionate pioneering genius on a 60-year mission. While his wide-ranging insights are applicable to the curious everyman, this tome can double as a text for interdisciplary coursework across neurobiology, artificial intelligence, the complexity sciences, nearly every domain of psychology, and surely many more. I find this book to be a veritable treasure trove, one that will enjoy a revered spot in my reference shelf for many years to come.As an emotion researcher, I discovered his Adaptive Resonance Theory a decade or so ago. It remains perhaps the very best explication of the neural substrates and bi-directional processing paths undergirding subjective emotional experience, if not consciousness itself. And, indeed, if there exist any ontologically real features of consciousness that inhabit the fundamental “furniture of the universe” (as prophets of Panpsychism suggest), they challenge his assertions not one whit. A brain is a brain is a brain, forged over eons by evolution, clearly the dynamically self-organizing, hierarchically resonant, biological orchestrator of the wide range of perceptual and cognitive capacities in living systems. All of which dynamically balance the Tao-like dance between stability and plasticity, between chaos and order, between creation and destruction, between autopoietic/genetic self-preservation and adaptive/epigenetic self-development, between survival and adaptation - the very evaluative criteria for natural selection. All of which are made known to us through the embodied resonance of pleasure and pain.This book will help you better understand yourself; your feelings, motives and actions, your hardwired responses and their flexibly soft-wired intervention points, as well as those of your brethren. If you are unschooled and ignorant, this book will make you smart. If you are clever, creative and technologically savvy, this book might even make you rich. Do not miss it!