Description
Book SynopsisThis book explains how the brain interacts with the social worldand why stories matter. How do our brains enable us to tell and follow stories? And how do stories affect our minds? In Stories and the Brain, Paul B. Armstrong analyzes the cognitive processes involved in constructing and exchanging stories, exploring their role in the neurobiology of mental functioning. Armstrong argues that the ways in which stories order events in time, imitate actions, and relate our experiences to others' lives are correlated to cortical processes of temporal binding, the circuit between action and perception, and the mirroring operations underlying embodied intersubjectivity. He reveals how recent neuroscientific findings about how the brain workshow it assembles neuronal syntheses without a central controllerilluminate cognitive processes involving time, action, and self-other relations that are central to narrative. An extension of his previous book, How Literature Plays with the Brain, this n
Trade ReviewStories and the Brain is a well-researched, engaging discussion on what narrative theory and neuroscience stand to gain from continued collaboration.
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CerebrumTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1. Neuroscience and Narrative Theory
Chapter 2. The Temporality of Narrative and the Decentered Brain
Chapter 3. Action, Embodied Cognition, and the As-If of Narrative Figuration
Chapter 4. Neuroscience and the Social Powers of Narrative
Epilogue
Notes
Works Cited
Index
