Neuroscience has long had an impact on the field of
psychiatry, and over the last two decades, with the
advent of cognitive neuroscience and functional
neuroimaging, that influence has been most pronounced.
However, many question whether psychopathology can be
understood by relying on neuroscience alone, and
highlight some of the perceived limits to the way in
which neuroscience informs psychiatry. Psychiatry as
Cognitive Neuroscience is a philosophical analysis of
the role of neuroscience in the study of
psychopathology. The book examines numerous cognitive
neuroscientific methods, such as neuroimaging and the
use of neuropsychological models, in the context of a
variety of psychiatric disorders, including depression,
schizophrenia, dependence syndrome, and personality
disorders. Psychiatry as Cognitive Neuroscience includes
chapters on the nature of psychiatry as a science; the
compatibility of the accounts of mental illness derived
from neuroscience, information-processing, and folk
psychology; the nature of mental illness; the impact of
methods such as fMRI, neuropsychology, and
neurochemistry, on psychiatry; the relationship between
phenomenological accounts of mental illness and those
provided by naturalistic explanations; the status of
delusions and the continuity between delusions and
ordinary beliefs; the interplay between clinical and
empirical findings in psychopathology and issues in
moral psychology and ethics. With contributions from
world class experts in philosophy and cognitive science,
this book will be essential reading for those who have
an interest in the importance and the limitations of
cognitive neuroscience as an aid to understanding mental
illness.
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