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This book explores mental disorders from a uniquely evolutionary perspective. Although there have been many attempts to mathematically model neural processes and, to some extent, their dysfunction, there is very little literature that models mental function within a sociocultural, socioeconomic, and environmental context.
Addressing this gap in the extant literature, this book explores essential aspects of mental disorders, recognizing the ubiquitous role played by the exaptation of crosstalk between cognitive modules at many different scales and levels of organization, the missing heritability of complex diseases, and cultural epigenetics. Further, it introduces readers to valuable control theory tools that permit the exploration of the environmental induction of neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as the study of the synergism between culture, psychopathology and sleep disorders, offering a distinctively unique resource.
List of contents
Consciousness, Crosstalk, and the Mereological Fallacy.- A Cognitive Paradigm for Gene Expression.- Western Atomism and its Culture-Bound Syndromes.- Environmental Induction of Neurodevelopmental Disorders.- Sleep, Psychopathology and Culture.- Embodied cognition and its disorders.- Tools for the Future: Hidden Symmetries.- Psychopathologies of automata I: autonomous vehiclesystems.- Psychopathologies of automata II: autonomous weapons and centaur systems.- The dynamics of environmental insult.- Social psychopathology: military doctrine and the madness of crowds.- Mathematical Appendix.- Index.
About the author
Rodrick Wallace, is a research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and a professor at Columbia University. He received a B.S. in mathematics and a Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University. A recipient of an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, he has also published the book “Gene Expression and Its Discontents” with his colleague Deborah Wallace. He has published many papers adapting quantitative methods from population, community and ecosystem ecology to the theoretical and empirical analysis of problems of public health and public order.
Summary
This book explores mental disorders from a uniquely evolutionary perspective. Although there have been many attempts to mathematically model neural processes and, to some extent, their dysfunction, there is very little literature that models mental function within a sociocultural, socioeconomic, and environmental context.
Addressing this gap in the extant literature, this book explores essential aspects of mental disorders, recognizing the ubiquitous role played by the exaptation of crosstalk between cognitive modules at many different scales and levels of organization, the missing heritability of complex diseases, and cultural epigenetics. Further, it introduces readers to valuable control theory tools that permit the exploration of the environmental induction of neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as the study of the synergism between culture, psychopathology and sleep disorders, offering a distinctively unique resource.
