The Student's Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience

by Jamie Ward

Reflecting recent changes in the way cognition and the brain are studied, this thoroughly updated edition of the best-selling textbook provides a comprehensive and student-friendly guide to cognitive neuroscience. Jamie Ward provides an easy-to-follow introduction to neural structure and function, as well as all the key methods and procedures of cognitive neuroscience, with a view to helping students understand how they can be used to shed light on the neural basis of cognition.



The book presents an up-to-date overview of the latest theories and findings in all the key topics in cognitive neuroscience, including vision, attention, memory, speech and language, numeracy, executive function, and social and emotional behavior. This edition also contains two completely new chapters on developmental cognitive neuroscience and hearing. Throughout, case studies, newspaper reports and everyday examples are used to help students understand the more challenging ideas that underpin the subject.



In addition each chapter includes:


Summaries of key terms and points Example essay questions Recommended further reading Feature boxes exploring interesting and popular questions and their implications for the subject.



Written in an engaging style by a leading researcher in the field, and now presented in full-color including numerous illustrative materials, this book will be invaluable as a core text for undergraduate modules in cognitive neuroscience. It can also be used as a key text on courses in cognition, cognitive neuropsychology, or brain and behavior. Those embarking on research will find it an invaluable starting point and reference.



The Student's Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience, 2nd Edition is accompanied by a set of online resources available free of charge to departments that recommend the textbook. These resources include:


A chapter-by-chapter, illustrated slideshow lecture course A bank of multiple-choice questions which allow for confidence-weighted answers Student resources to aid exam preparation.

Genres: Neuroscience, Psychology, Science, Nonfiction, Textbooks, Reference, Academic

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Dr Jamie Ward is one of the world's leading experts on synesthesia. He has contributed to the understanding of science through numerous talks and media coverage in newspapers, radio and television including documentaries produced by the Discovery Channel and BBC Horizon"

Reviews

[freddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading for uni.

Page 390-onwards was pages and pages of references and the author index, so... I'm all done! Interesting enough and easy to understand. The questions at the end of each chapter were fairly helpful, as well. :)

[Phoebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute must read for anyone on a neuroscience course. It explains all the relevant concepts really well with lots of references to research if you want to do more reading. It’s the first textbook I’ve ever read cover to cover because the whole lot was really relevant. It was written by a neuroscience professor who felt there wasn’t a comprehensive textbook for his course so he made his own.

[Kasia · Rating 5 out of 5]

fajne takie fajniejsze niż programowanie

[Michael Boitel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have tolerated you for long enough even when you never respected my boundaries. Finally I am strong enough to tell you that it's over. I never want to see you again

[Riley · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author introduces the book as an abstract way of attempting to explain cognitive neuroscience in a way that could be understood and learned by student readers. The writing style was the complete opposite of this, dysfunctional in its attempt at trying to be informative and easy to read. The book was more complex than it needed to be and tried to address the content in a 'I know what I'm writing about' format instead of a 'lets inform the reader' format. If you are trying to develop a concept of knowledge in cognitive neuroscience or physiological psychology then I would recommend crash courses on each of the individual key terms presented in this book. Much easier to research the topics elsewhere than try and wrap your head around a failed attempt at making the content easily informative. All in all, a great purchase if I was looking for a glossary.

[Sina Homayooni · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a person who wants to know about all aspects of cognitive neuroscience and is new to the field, this book is amazingly sufficient; for you can't open a book like Gazzaniga's and read it to the end.

It is fluently written, nicely explained, and contains easy to get illustrations and graphs. The best thing about it, is that the author challenges your mind by introducing different modern cognitive models. It also contains stories from our real life that correspond to the cognitive subjects explained!

I guess I was lucky I found it in our university's library.

[Rojna Yvonne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yeh I read a frikken textbook cover to cover for my last exam. It was surprisingly brilliant.

[Alice Wardle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brilliant introductory guide to many topics in cognitive neuroscience, including vision, attention, movement, memory, literacy, and basic principles of neuroimaging techniques.

It is often difficult to picture where exactly certain parts of the brain are in relation to each other, and I did find well-detailed images lacking in the book. However, graphs and cognitive models are well presented, making some of the information regarding the results of research studies and developed theoretical models of cognition easier to understand. I'm also mighty impressed that one person - Jamie Ward, wrote the entire textbook. A big thank you to him for giving me the foundations required for my degree.

[Brianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

It wasn’t my favorite psychology textbook. It wasn’t as engaging as I expected it to be. There were more grammatical errors than I am used to seeing in a textbook. It went into extreme detail in some chapters and not enough in others. Some of the language was quite repetitive, as well. Phrases like “This need not be the case” were unnecessarily common. The pictures never seemed to add much to what was discussed. Despite this, it was still a useful resource for my class. It had good information and the graphs and graphics helped synthesize everything together. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad

[batuhan_a_kocak · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant textbook. The organization is very understandable and easy to follow. I especially liked the explanation of neuroimaging mechanisms. We always read about fMRI, PET and EEG scans in cognitive neuroscience papers but we do not know enough about what these images are actually visualizing. I recommend this book to everyone who wants to learn about cognitive neuroscience. Even if you don't have time to read the whole book, read the first five chapters to learn what cognitive neuroscience is and how one can study it.

[Jonas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard book, but filled to the brim with knowledge. Really glad this was included in the course. Most points in the book are made with clear & visual examples from other research. Sometimes confusing when outdated things are referenced, but it does build a full overview by doing this. The video lectures on youtube are a welcome addition to clarify some of the harder points.
I haven't done all chapters for my course, yet I will return for those later.
OU-Psychology PB0612

[Christopher Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This text was very dense but contained little fluff. Better images and charts could have greatly improved this text.

[Jeremy Mifsud · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite books I had to study for my psychology course! Not only is it an interesting topic, but the material is wll-presented and I felt engaged, and no chapter was too long or short.

[Andy Gravee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meer en betere illustraties/schema's zouden helpen. Veel informatie en vaak onduidelijk wat er precies wordt bedoeld ; met name de uitleg over de opzet van verschillende onderzoeken.

[Teo]

2016.11.02–2017.01.02

Ward J (2015) Student's Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience, The (3e)

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished that. It's such a great book. Good cover of multiple subjects. It also contains extra practice,videos, and flashcards on the website.
Thank you professor ward:)

[Nick Spiess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great introduction to the neuroscience and psychological processes behind our cognition.

Read it for Cognitive Neuroscience at UWEC.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and detailed, very comprehensive, but not meant for an introductory course at all

[Jakob Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for psychology in undergrad. Can be a bit dense a first but overall a great learning material.

[Bien · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jamie Ward is a very knowledgeable professor. Unfortunately the book was not very clear to me at times which made the subject a lot harder than necessary. But I passed, so it's not all bad. 🤷

[Marcel Schwarz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent overview over neuropsychology. I'll probably have to go through this book again and again to really take out all the important knowledge.

[Jeanie Prince · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this textbook as a beginner to cognitive neuroscience. I only took a course on cognition during college. This book is dense. From a functional perspective, I like the summary and simple overview questions to help me review after reading through an entire chapter and relieved my guilt that I couldn't grasp the extended concepts.

What I don't like is I found myself completely lost to grasp the different perspectives and current research findings in some of the topics (e.g. Executive brain, social and emotional brain). For some, the text said they are prevalent and significant studies. Hence, I tried to Google and found little resources to enrich my understanding (why I did this is at first was simply because I couldn't understand so you know you had to find another way...) It was a frustrating experience that I could not figure out what is really important or what is only good to know. In the end, I decided if I could find more resources online (make good use of Youtube, online lectures etc.) you know how important that issue will be. It indeed took me a while to figure this out...

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for my upcoming exam, and the pressure that surrounds that off course always colours the experience. But of the textbooks I had to read over the years this was definitely one of the better ones. The style makes the complicated subject matter accessible, the illustrations are for the most part well designed and the examples used are well chosen and help comprehend very abstract ideas. Though I did have a giggle at how many times the author used Barack Obama as an example for something. Subtle :)

[Cerapearl · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was easy to follow and simplified the subject matter. The content was pared down, which I think works wonderfully. Short chapters, lots of examples, and optimal font size (imo). A keeper as far as textbooks go and the price is awesome.

[Sarah Hackley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fascinating subject, but the writing style can be difficult to follow.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overview of several cognitive aspects of the brain.

[Daria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good student book on cognitive neuroscience (as the title says, duh). It's clear and detailed in its explanations, plus it has tips and questions to see if you understood each chapter and better prepare for the exam. Furthermore, there is an online expansion.