Mind Within the Brain

In The Mind within the Brain, David Redish brings together cutting edge research in psychology, robotics, economics, neuroscience, and the new fields of neuroeconomics and computational psychiatry, to offer a unified theory of human decision-making. Most importantly, Redish shows how vulnerabilities, or "failure-modes," in the decision-making system can lead to serious dysfunctions, such as irrational behavior, addictions, problem gambling, and PTSD. Told with verve and humor in an easily readable style, Redish makes these difficult concepts understandable. Ranging widely from the surprising roles of emotion, habit, and narrative in decision-making, to the larger philosophical questions of how mind and brain are related, what makes us human, the nature of morality, free will, and the conundrum of robotics and consciousness, The Mind within the Brain offers fresh insight into one of the most complex aspects of human behavior.

Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota

Decisions and the brain
1: What is a Decision?
2: The Tale of the Thermostat
3: The Definition of Value
4: Value, Euphoria, and the Do-it-Again Signal
5: Risk and Reward
The Decision-Making System
6: Multiple Decision-Making Systems
7: Reflexes
8: Emotion and the Pavlovian Action-Selection System
9: Deliberation
10: The Habits of our Lives
11: Integrating Information
12: The Stories We Tell
13: Motivation
14: The Tradeoff Between Exploration and Exploitation
15: Self-Control
The Brain With a Mind of its Own
16: The Physical Mind
17: Imagination
18: Addiction
19: Gambling and Behavioral Addictions
20: PTSD
21: Computational Psychiatry
The Human Condition
22: What Makes Us Human?
23: The Science of Morality
24: The Conundrum of Robotics
Epilogue
Appendix
A: Information Processing in Neurons
B: Gleaning Information from the Brain
C: Content-Addressable Memory
Bibliography