Psychiatry and Neuroscience Update

Book excerpt: This broad and thought-provoking volume provides an overview of recent intellectual and scientific advances that intersect psychiatry and neuroscience, offering a wide range of penetrating insights in both disciplines. The fourth volume on the topic in the last several years from a varying panel of international experts identifies the borders, trends and implications in both fields today and goes beyond that into related disciplines to seek out connections and influences. Similar to its three Update book predecessors, Psychiatry and Neuroscience – Volume IV presents a range of interesting topics in the main disciplines – psychiatry and neuroscience – and attempts to provide deeper comprehension or explication of the normal and diseased human mind, its biological correlates and its biographical and existential implications. This engaging volume continues the previous style of exploring different disciplines and trying to integrate disciplinary evidence from varying points of view in an organic manner. The first section is about epistemological considerations regarding the study of normal and abnormal human behaviors, including, for example, the topic of phenomenological psychopathology and phenomenological psychiatry in relation to schizophrenia and substance misuse, among other topics. Section 2 addresses issues around the translation of basic neuroscience to expression in the human brain and behavioral implications. Section 3 discusses the issues of learning, teaching and the role of social environment in the field of neuroscience. Finally section 4 reviews various perspectives on explaining human pathological behaviors -- from brain disorders to psychopathology.