Aleksander, Igor. Impossible Minds: My Neurons, My Consciousness. London, UK: Imperial College, 1996.
Alper, Matthew. The "God" Part of the Brain: A
Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God. Rogue Press, 2001.
Drawing from anthropology, biology, art, history, philosophy, Alper defines
a fundamental part of who we are that is drawn to the search for and experience
of the transcendent.
Andreasen, Nancy C. Brave New Brain: Conquering Mental Illness in the Era of the Genome. Oxford University Press, 2001.
Ashbrook, James B., Carol Rausch Albright, Anne Harrington. The Humanizing
Brain: Where Religion and Neuroscience Meet. Pilgrim Press, 1997.
Good, comprehensive historical and philosophical overview proposing an integration
between neuroscience research and religion.
Austin, James H. Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation
and Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.
This massive award winning book uses Zen Buddhism as the opening wedge for an
extraordinarily wide-ranging exploration of consciousness. It also covers such
topics as sleep and dreams, mental illness, consciousness-altering drugs, and
integrating neurology and mystical states.
Cairns-Smith, Alexander G. Evolving the Mind: On the Nature of Matter and the Origin of Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Calvin, William H., George A. Ogemann. Conversations with Neil's Brain: The Neural Nature of Thought and Language. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994.
Calvin, William. The Cerebral Symphony. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1990.
Churchland, Patricia Smith. Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Understanding of the Mind/Brain. M.I.T. Press, 1986.
Crick, Francis. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. New York: Scribner ; Maxwell Macmillan International, 1994.
D'Aquili, Eugene, Andrew B. Newberg. Why God Won't
Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. New York: Random House,
2001.
High tech neuroimaging research to document what happens in the brain when we
experience God. A tantalizing hypothesis of how deep within our evolutionary
roots are the perceptual foundations of reality that give rise to our experience
of the transcendent.
Damasio, Antonio R. Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain.
New York: Avon Books, 1995.
An excellent critique of Descartes' dualism in light of contemporary cognitive
and brain science, and a strong case for emotion as fundamental to mind along
with reason.
Eccles, John C. How the Self Controls the Brain. New York: Springer-Verlag,
1994.
Argues that our self-conscious self transcends materialism on the basis of quantum
physics. This produces a new dualism based on neuroscience.
Edelman, Gerald M. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind. New York: BasicBooks, 1992.
Feinberg, Todd E. Altered Egos: How the Brain Creates the Self. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001.
From a career as a neurologist trying to understand the bizarre subjective beliefs
of brain-damaged patients, comes an interesting philosophical probe into how
the brain/mind constructs a sense of self.
Fuster, Joaquin M. Memory in the Cerebral Cortex: An Empirical Approach to Neural Networks in the Human and Nonhuman Primate. MIT Press, 1999.
Gazzaniga, Michael S., Richard B. Irvy, G. R. Mangun. Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of the Mind. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998.
Giovannoli, Joseph. The Biology of Belief: How our Biology Biases Our Beliefs
and Perceptions. Rosetta Press, Inc., 2001.
How our brain predisposes us to create a religious narrative of meaning in the
face of limited perceptual evidence.
Griffin, David Ray. Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom,
and the Mind-Body Problem. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1998.
Argues against the two dominant views, dualism and materialism, and for the
third form of realism, panexperientialism, which provides a nondualistic interactionism.
Herbert, Nick. Elemental Mind: Human Consciousness and the New Physics. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 1993.
Hunt, Morton. The Universe Within: A New Science Explores the Human Mind. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1982.
Jaynes, Julian. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.
Jeeves, Malcolm A. Mind Fields: Reflections on the Science of Mind and Brain. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1994.
Kim, Jaegwon. Philosophy of Mind. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996.
LeDoux, J. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Touchstone, 1996.
Llinas, Rodolfo R. I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2001.
How the brain creates a "virtual" reality of the world to which it
must adapt as acting agent and the evolutionary origins of this wondrous dynamic.
Metzinger, Thomas. Neural Correlaxes of Consciousness: Empirical and Conceptual Questions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.
Moravia, Sergio. The Enigma of Mind: The Mind-Body Problem in Contemporary
Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Analyzes the mind-body debate of the half-century and argues that both materialism
and mentalism are untenable. Instead, the author holds that the concrete person-in-the-world
involves a "mental language" expressing aspects of human being and
acting that cannot be otherwise explained.
Penrose, Roger. Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1997.
Ramachandran, V. S., S. Blakeslee. Phantoms in the
Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind. New York, NY: William Morrow
& Co., 1998.
Highly acclaimed work by neuroscientist who uncovers deep and ultimate questions
of human nature in his research and treatment of patients with neurological
disorders.
Ramón-Moliner, Enrique. The Conscious State of Matter: The Riddles of the Brain. New York: Vantage, 1994.
Russell, Robert J., Nancey Murphy, Theo C. Meyering. eds. Neuroscience
and the Person: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. Vatican City
State: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1999.
The collection of twenty-one essays explores the creative interaction among
the cognitive neurosciences, philosophy, and theology. Some of the major themes
are exploration of the possibility of God's interaction with the world through
personal agency, relationship between brain and personhood.
Scott, Alwyn. Stairway to the Mind: The Controversial New Science of Consciousness.
New York, NY: Springer-Verlag, 1995.
Argues that the nonlinear dynamics at every hierarchical level provide for dynamical
descriptors at higher levels. Thus emergent dualism, which lies between vitalism
and reductionism, is the preferred approach.
Searle, R. John. Minds, Brains, and Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Sharpe, R. A. Making the Human Mind. London: Routledge, 1990.
Strawson, Galen. Mental Reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994.
One of the best books on the mind-body problem by a philosopher in the mainline
(materialist) tradition; Denies that nonmental phenomena, publically observable
phenomena and behavioral phenomena do not play a major role in explaining mental
phenomena, thereby challenging the standard neo-behaviorist view.
Norretranders, Tor. The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size.
Translated by Jonathan Sydenham. Penguin USA, 1999.
Denmark's leading science writer Tor Norretranders believes that a great deal
of our existence is being edited out by our unconscious. According to the author
our brain processes only 16 of the 11 million bits of information our senses
take in per second. Written for a non-technical audience, he explains scientific
theories and medical facts to prove his theory of user illusion and to encourage
readers to look beyond the obvious and explore the unknown.
Weiskrantz, Lawrence. Consciousness Lost and Found: A Neuropsychological Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.