This chapter aims to unravel the contribution of the neuroscience of reading to the study of literacy development across languages and writing systems. The development of early literacy can be adversely impacted by neurodevelopmental disorders and socioeconomic disparities that have lasting effects on child and adolescent cognition. The goal of this chapter is to address the continuum of literacy development in two critical stages, birth-to-six and six-to-ten years old, and their respective language and brain milestones: the hardwired brain networks for speech, and the adaptation of brain regions for reading. The discussion attempts to disambiguate neurodevelopmental disorders and socioeconomic factors that influence early literacy, and the associated effects on brain function and structure. It is concluded that there is emerging evidence for a near-universal brain system that develops with learning to read across writing systems and the chapter addresses the dynamic relations among brain networks for reading, speech and writing across the two age spans. It is also claimed that the neuroscience of reading has the potential to inform prediction of reading achievement, identification of risk for reading difficulties, and possibly, choice of intervention and of the age ranges that are more amenable to treatment.

Although our ultimate goal is an analysis and theory of perspective taking in literature, an important insight is that perspective taking in reading literature is subject to the same factors and constraints and may depend on the same types of processes as perspective taking in real life. In Chapter 3, we review research in social and personality psychology that is applicable to literary perspective taking and that can help us advance our understanding of how readers make sense of fictional minds. Under the general umbrella term of “mind reading,” theory of mind, theory theory, and simulation theories offer competing explanations of how individuals make sense of other minds. We argue that interpreting these ideas in terms of analogy provides the basis for a more coherent analysis. We also consider the problem of empathy and how it is related to mind reading. Our analysis is that empathy should be thought of as emotional perspective taking, and we apply our analogical inference approach here as well. Finally, we consider the neural bases of perspective taking and discuss how different brain networks may be related to the components of perspective taking by analogy.

This chapter focuses on the role of narrative in psychology, arguing that narrative is implicitly universal in psychology, is the basis of good science and should be used explicitly across the different areas of psychology, that is, it is the root metaphor of psychology (Sarbin, 1986). There is a brief exploration of narrative and neuroscience, and the evolution of narrative. There is also a focus on dominant narratives, reality and identity. Identity and narrative are closely related. There is a brief description of redemptive and contaminated narratives, and the relationship between narratives and memory construction. Some narratives are universal, and some are cultural, and we need to know how to make distinctions between these, as they help explain the fundamental nature of being human versus cultural constructions.

Chapter 4 describes the field of cognitive science, which is the arena where all those who study “intelligent systems” (“minds“) get together to compare notes. A shared idea is that the mind can be understood as an information-processing computational system. We will see how during the 1960s renewed interest in the mind from different academic disciplines emerged as a reaction to the denial of the mind of an approach to psychology called behaviorism. We then discuss the various strands of thinking in a variety of different fields that led to this “cognitive revolution.” We learn that there are fundamental, opposing views in this field that are relevant to the nature–nurture debate. Despite differences, a general understanding within cognitive science is that the mind can be studied at different levels of abstractness and from different angles which to some extent compete but also complement each other.

Mentalization-based treatment (MBT) for psychosis focuses on the decoupling of bodily and mental experience as well as the stresses of mentalizing during social interaction. In a framework of mentalizing, psychotic phenomena can be represented as severe disturbances to the experience of oneself as a coherent unit. Clinical treatment that aims to increase integration and stability of self-experience is illustrated in this chapter using clinical examples. The first task is to identify treatment objectives and define any obstacles to treatment, working with co-constructed representations of the clinical problem. The second task is to integrate the viewpoints of the patient, the clinical team, and the social care network, and to agree an overall working formulation. This is followed by therapeutic intervention to stabilize self-mentalizing using interventions from the core MBT model.

While psychiatry has made great strides in recent decades toward integrating our increasing understanding of the biological bases of cognition, it nonetheless continues to suffer from imprecise diagnostics and blunt treatment options. Recent advances in computational neuroscience have the potential to address these issues, with a range of neural and cognitive models offering the possibility of a more precise psychiatric nosology with more targeted therapeutics. Here we review a variety of these models, with a special emphasis on their application to addiction, psychosis, anxiety disorders, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. We then close with a discussion of potential challenges in incorporating these insights and methods into a clinical setting.

Cognitive architectures are computational theories that attempt to cover as much of cognition as possible. Developers of cognitive architectures need to balance functionality of the theory against its explanatory and predictive power, which are often at odds with one another. This chapter discusses this balance with respect to working memory, cognitive performance, perceptual and motor systems, learning and neuroscience. It discusses which solutions six cognitive architectures offer to these areas, and illustrates this with a number of successful models.

Self-reported wellbeing is correlated with activity in a number of brain areas. The sensation of pain is most clearly experienced in the anterior cingulate cortex which registers both physical pain and social pain.

The mind affects the body and vice versa. Wellbeing predicts mortality as well as smoking does. Prolonged psychological stress leads to excessive production of adrenaline/epinephrine and cortisol, over-activity of the immune system and to excessive inflammation in the body. Equally, the body affects the mind. This is obvious in the effects of drugs, recreational and psychiatric.

Our genes have important effects on our wellbeing. We know this in two ways. Identical twins (who have identical genes) are much more similar to each other in their wellbeing than are non-identical twins. Adopted children are more similar in mental health to their biological parents than to the parents who raised them. It is however not possible to neatly separate the effects of the genes and the environment for two reasons: (1) Genes and environment often interact in their effects on wellbeing. (2) Genes and the environment are correlated.

The neuroscience of creativity has grown significantly over the past several years. One aspect of creative ideation that has been relatively understudied, however, is how emotional processes—and the neural systems underlying them—shape creativity. Creativity, like its muse, can be ephemeral: vulnerable to internal and external environmental factors that spark new ideas or snuff them out, and emotions can modulate these effects. In this chapter, we review findings underscoring the critical interactions between cognitive and emotional neuromodulatory mechanisms during creative thinking, including the potential impact of mood, stress, and reward processes on known neurocognitive components of creative ideation. We further examine whether and under what circumstances such interactions can have positive or negative consequences for creativity. Lastly, we discuss how emotional task content may impact the generation of the creative product on the part of the creator. Across these domains, we synthesize this literature and propose a framework for future research that integrates brain function at the neurochemical, neuroanatomical, and systems levels with emotional aspects of creative thinking.

This chapter explores the impulse to understand reading and criticism in the terms provided by the natural and social sciences, asking both what generates such an impulse and whether it can deliver on what it promises. Such an impulse dates back to the early days of literary studies as an academic discipline, if not longer, but it has returned with a vengeance in the early twenty-first century. The chapter explores two recent instantiations of the impulse: the effort to use Big Data to understand the history of the modern novel, and the hope to understand aesthetic experience in the terms developed by neuroscience. Each of these models presents itself as a radical departure from traditional aesthetic criticism, and promises to break down boundaries between disciplines in ways that would revolutionize how we understand the practice of criticism. Wittgenstein’s writing on language, the mind, and aesthetics, the chapter argues, helps us understand the misplaced assumptions and conceptual weaknesses that pervade these efforts. Instead of giving us the generalizing causal accounts that define the most coherent and rigorous scientific disciplines, criticism and aesthetic understanding arise from a kind of immersive experience, a prolonged encounter with a singular artifact, and one in which empirical studies have no clear explanatory role.

In this chapter, Philipp Kellmeyer discusses how to protect mental privacy and mental integrity in the interaction of AI-based neurotechnology from the perspective of philosophy, ethics, neuroscience, and psychology. The author argues that mental privacy and integrity are important anthropological goods that need to be protected from unjustified interferences. He then outlines the current scholarly discussion and policy initiatives about neurorights and takes the position that while existing human rights provide sufficient legal instruments, an approach is required that makes these rights actionable and justiciable to protect mental privacy and mental integrity, for example, by connecting fundamental rights to specific applied laws.