It's a Jungle in There: How Competition And Cooperation In The Brain Shape The Mind - Softcover

Rosenbaum, a psychology professor at Pennsylvania State University, asserts that the entire cognitive world operates along Darwinian lines-that competition among the neural circuits underlying motor behavior, thinking, memory and perception accounts for everything we think, say, and do. ... It's a Jungle in There deserves to be selected. It presents a bold idea that puts human cognition squarely onto the shoulders of giants in the natural sciences, Darwin among them. (Robert Epstein, Scientific American)

Tying the vicissitudes of psychology to any one principle, even loosely, is bold, but Rosenbaum's careful prose will ignite thoughtful debate, not the heated arguments evolutionary psychology often arouses. (Publishers Weekly)

A splendid book, full of amazing insights. Starting from the claim that processes in minds and brains follow basic Darwinian principles, David Rosenbaum takes us on a surprising tour of cognitive psychology, opening our eyes to novel and exciting views of a number of classic phenomena." (Wolfgang Prinz, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany)

It's a Jungle in There pursues the hypothesis that the overarching theory of biology, Darwin's theory, should be the overarching theory of cognitive psychology. David Rosenbaum, a cognitive psychologist and former editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology, proposes that the phenomena of cognitive psychology can be understood as emergent interactions among neural elements that compete and cooperate in a kind of inner jungle. This perspective allows Rosenbaum to present cognitive psychology in a new way, both for students (for whom the book is mainly intended) and for seasoned investigators (who may be looking for a fresh way to approach and understand their material). Rather than depicting the discipline as a rag-tag collection of miscellaneous facts, as has generally been the case in textbooks, this book presents cognitive psychology under a single rubric: "It's a jungle in there." Making continual reference to hypothetical neural creatures eking out their livings in a tough environment, the book offers an over-arching principle that will both entertain readers and motivate more in-depth study of the mind and brain.