Patrick McNamara

The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams provides comprehensive coverage of the basic neuroscience of both sleep and dreams for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. It details new scientific discoveries, places those discoveries within evolutionary context, and links established findings with implications for sleep medicine. This second edition focuses on recent developments in the social nature of sleep and dreams. Coverage includes the neuroscience of all stages of sleep; the lifespan development of these sleep stages; the role of non-REM and REM sleep in health and mental health; comparative sleep; biological rhythms; sleep disorders; sleep memory; dream content; dream phenomenology, and dream functions. Students, scientists, and interested non-specialists will find this book accessible and informative.

The Neuroscience of Sleep and Dreams provides comprehensive coverage of the basic neuroscience of both sleep and dreams for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. It details new scientific discoveries, places those discoveries within evolutionary context, and links established findings with implications for sleep medicine. This second edition focuses on recent developments in the social nature of sleep and dreams. Coverage includes the neuroscience of all stages of sleep; the lifespan development of these sleep stages; the role of non-REM and REM sleep in health and mental health; comparative sleep; biological rhythms; sleep disorders; sleep memory; dream content; dream phenomenology, and dream functions. Students, scientists, and interested non-specialists will find this book accessible and informative.

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Religious Experience, now updated and expanded in a new edition, updates key topics covered in the first edition including: decentering and self-transformation, supernatural agent cognitions, mystical states, religious language, ritualization, and religious group agency. It expands upon the first edition to include major findings on brain and religious experience over the past decade, focusing on methodology, future thinking, and psychedelics. It provides an up-to-date review of brain-based accounts of religious experiences, and systematically examines the rationale for utilizing neuroscience approaches to religion. While it is primarily intended for religious studies scholars, people interested in comparative religion, philosophy of religion, cultural evolution, and personal self-transformation will find an account of how such transformation is accomplished within religious contexts.

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Religious Experience, now updated and expanded in a new edition, updates key topics covered in the first edition including: decentering and self-transformation, supernatural agent cognitions, mystical states, religious language, ritualization, and religious group agency. It expands upon the first edition to include major findings on brain and religious experience over the past decade, focusing on methodology, future thinking, and psychedelics. It provides an up-to-date review of brain-based accounts of religious experiences, and systematically examines the rationale for utilizing neuroscience approaches to religion. While it is primarily intended for religious studies scholars, people interested in comparative religion, philosophy of religion, cultural evolution, and personal self-transformation will find an account of how such transformation is accomplished within religious contexts.

The purpose of this book is to use neuroscience discoveries concerning religious experiences, the Self and personhood to deepen, enhance and interrogate the theological and philosophical set of ideas known as Personalism. McNamara proposes a new eschatological form of personalism that is consistent with current neuroscience models of relevant brain functions concerning the self and personhood and that can meet the catastrophic challenges of the 21st century. Eschatological Personalism, rooted in the philosophical tradition of "Boston Personalism", takes as its starting point the personalist claim that the significance of a self and personality is not fully revealed until it has reached its endpoint, but theologically that end point can only occur within the eschatological realm. That realm is explored in the book along with implications for personalist theory and ethics. Topics covered include the agent intellect, dreams and the imagination, future-orientation and eschatology, phenomenology of Time, social ethics, Love, the challenge of AI, privacy and solitude and the individual ethic of autarchy. This book is an innovative combination of the neuroscientific and theological insights provided by a Personalist viewpoint. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Cognitive Science, Theology, Religious Studies and the philosophy of the mind.

The purpose of this book is to use neuroscience discoveries concerning religious experiences, the Self and personhood to deepen, enhance and interrogate the theological and philosophical set of ideas known as Personalism. McNamara proposes a new eschatological form of personalism that is consistent with current neuroscience models of relevant brain functions concerning the self and personhood and that can meet the catastrophic challenges of the 21st century. Eschatological Personalism, rooted in the philosophical tradition of "Boston Personalism", takes as its starting point the personalist claim that the significance of a self and personality is not fully revealed until it has reached its endpoint, but theologically that end point can only occur within the eschatological realm. That realm is explored in the book along with implications for personalist theory and ethics. Topics covered include the agent intellect, dreams and the imagination, future-orientation and eschatology, phenomenology of Time, social ethics, Love, the challenge of AI, privacy and solitude and the individual ethic of autarchy. This book is an innovative combination of the neuroscientific and theological insights provided by a Personalist viewpoint. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Cognitive Science, Theology, Religious Studies and the philosophy of the mind.

This book provides a complete introduction to the neuroscience of sleep and dreams in plain language. In it, Patrick McNamara outlines new discoveries in the science of sleep and dreams, places them within an evolutionary context, and brings them together with existing scientific findings and implications for sleep medicine. Unlike other introductory texts, the important evolutionary background and social nature of sleep and dreams is emphasized. Major advances in sleep medicine, sleep and memory, dream content analyzes, brain correlates of sleep stages and lifespan development of sleep are covered in depth. While the text is geared towards students, the general reader and scientists studying other disciplines will find it accessible and informative.

This book provides a complete introduction to the neuroscience of sleep and dreams in plain language. In it, Patrick McNamara outlines new discoveries in the science of sleep and dreams, places them within an evolutionary context, and brings them together with existing scientific findings and implications for sleep medicine. Unlike other introductory texts, the important evolutionary background and social nature of sleep and dreams is emphasized. Major advances in sleep medicine, sleep and memory, dream content analyzes, brain correlates of sleep stages and lifespan development of sleep are covered in depth. While the text is geared towards students, the general reader and scientists studying other disciplines will find it accessible and informative.

The purpose of the book is to summarise recent advances in our understanding of leader-follower interactions and to illustrate these principles with the lives of ancient political and military leaders from Greece and Rome. The authors review psychologic, cognitive neuroscientific and evolutionary approaches to leader-follower dynamics and illustrate these dynamics as they played out in the lives of the most eminent of the military and political leaders of the classical world. The authors summarise what is known about leader-follower relations by reviewing all extant papers on the topic in the psychology, neuroscientific and evolutionary psychology literature. The material for this book came from Plutarch's compendium of 42 biographies of Greek and Roman leaders.

Challenging existing claims concerning the functions of Rapid Eye Movement sleep and the purported meaninglessness of dreams, this text offers a complete and up-to-date survey on the anatomy, physiology, ontogeny, and phylogeny of REM sleep as well as the cognitive neuroscience of dream phenomonolgy and dream content. The text underlines the importance of looking at how REM interacts physiologically with NREM sleep, in order to understand the potential functions of REM. The findings support and extend clams that the functions of REM involve memory consolidation and regulation of emotional conflicts and expression. Analyses of evolutionary relationships include sleep in reptiles, birds, marsupials, and mammals. Chapters explore interactions of REM and NREM and effects of these interactions on anabolic hormone release as well as the effects on dream content, the effects of genes and genomic imprinting on sleep, and theories of dream formation and content.

Money Matters presents the findings of the largest and most incisive study of factors influencing church giving in America. The authors conducted an exhaustive study of church giving in five representative denominations: Assemblies of God, Southern Baptist, Roman Catholic, ELCA, and Presbyterian. With detailed information from 625 churches, this book offers surprising conclusions about member contributions.