Table of Contents

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

About the Author

A. David Redish is Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and the Graduate Program in Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota.

Reviews

"The Mind Within the Brain is a very valuable introduction to the neuroscientific paradigm and to understanding how we make choices. It is an enjoyable read, easy to relate to and very educational... is ambitious in its scope and style; not only does he want to explain how action-selection systems work in the brain, but also how they malfunction whilst delving into the philosophical and ethical consequences of analysing the mind in such a manner."
--Jodie Russell (University of Edinburgh), British Society for Literature and Science
"Well researched and delivered with a light touch."
- Nature
"The author, a neuroscientist at the University of Minnesota, has a flair for explaining complex ideas, and he uses humor and personal stories to keep the lay reader interested. (He also has kindly included appendices for us neuroscience neophytes.) Know that Redish has done some important work here, challenging some of our assumptions about how the brain works and paving new ways for working with some of the most challenging problems involving the
brain."-Daily Kos
"David Redish is a leading neuroscientist known for his pioneering, creative work. In this thoughtful book, he clearly describes the latest findings in brain science to help readers better understand what really drives the choices we make."
-Tali Sharot, Affective Brain Lab, Cognitive, Perceptual, & Brain Science, University College London, author of The Optimism Bias
"Over the last decade there has been an explosion in our understanding of how the brain makes decisions. This book, written by one of the leading scholars in the field, is a must read for anyone interested in this area."
-Antonio Rangel, Professor of Neuroscience and Economics, California Institute of Technology