Purkinje's Vision


Book Description

The life of Jan Evangelista Purkinje (1787-1869) has fascinated students from many disciplines. Histologists marvel at his early descriptions of cells; physiologists admire his attempts to relate structure to function; pharmacologists view in awe his heroic experiments on self-administered drugs; forensic scientists acknowledge his role in the use of fingerprints for identification; and Czech patriots salute his awakening of pride in their nation. Yet all these achievements followed his initial enquiries into vision. It is this psychological dimension that fostered this collaboration. As the title suggests, the present volume is bifocal. In the narrow sense it refers to Purkinje's studies of vision, but in its broader view it concerns Purkinje's anticipation of neuroscience. Purkinje provided evidence to support both its cellular and its conceptual base. At the cellular level his acute vision is immortalized within our bodies. At the conceptual level, he sought to relate subjective phenomena to their objective underpinnings--to link psychology to physiology. Vision provides a bond that unites psychology and physiology, and it is this bond that was strengthened by Purkinje's enquiries. The authors have tried to provide a context in which Purkinje's descriptions of visual phenomena can be placed. In some cases this exposes clear precursors of research for which Purkinje has been credited. In others, there was nothing to suggest the phenomena that he exposed. The book translates Purkinje's initial masterpiece on subjective vision and places it in the context of emerging views of neuroscience.




Art and Visual Perception


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Visual Thinking


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The 35th anniversary of this classic of art theory.




The Film Sense


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A renowned Soviet director discusses his theory of film as an artistic medium which must appeal to all senses and applies it to an analysis of sequences from his major movies.




A New Astronomy


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Hysteria Beyond Freud


Book Description

"She's hysterical." For centuries, the term "hysteria" has been used by physicians and laymen to diagnose and dismiss the extreme emotionality and mysterious physical disorders presumed to bedevil others—especially women. How did this medical concept assume its power? What cultural purposes does it serve? Why do different centuries and different circumstances produce different kinds of hysteria? These are among the questions pursued in this absorbing, erudite reevaluation of the history of hysteria. The widely respected authors draw upon the insights of social and cultural history, rather than Freudian psychoanalysis, to examine the ways in which hysteria has been conceived by doctors and patients, writers and artists, in Europe and North America, from antiquity to the early years of the twentieth century. In so doing, they show that a history of hysteria is a history of how we understand the mind. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.




The Oxford Handbook of Eye Movements


Book Description

In the past few years, there has been an explosion of eye movement research in cognitive science and neuroscience. This has been due to the availability of 'off the shelf' eye trackers, along with software to allow the easy acquisition and analysis of eye movement data. Accompanying this has been a realisation that eye movement data can be informative about many different aspects of perceptual and cognitive processing. Eye movements have been used to examine the visual and cognitive processes underpinning a much broader range of human activities, including, language production, dialogue, human computer interaction, driving behaviour, sporting performance, and emotional states. Finally, in the past thirty years, there have been real advances in our understanding of the neural processes that underpin eye movement behaviour. The Oxford Handbook of Eye Movements provides the first comprehensive review of the entire field of eye movement research. In over fifty chapters, it reviews the developments that have so far taken place, the areas actively being researched, and looks at how the field is likely to devlop in the coming years. The first section considers historical and background material, before moving onto section 2 on the neural basis of eye movements. The third and fourth sections looks at visual cognition and eye movements and eye movement pathology and development. The final sections consider eye movements and reading and language processing and eye movements. Bringing together cutting edge research from and international team of leading psychologists, neuroscientists, and vision researchers, this book is the definitive reference work in this field.