Inhalt: | Groping around a familiar room in the dark, relearning to read after a brain injury, navigating a virtual landscape through an avatar: all are expressions of vicariance--when the brain substitutes one process or function for another. Alain Berthoz shows that this capacity allows humans to think creatively in an increasingly complex world.-- Introduction: The challenge -- Vicariance: a many-faceted concept -- From the universal to the particular -- Part I. The vicarious act -- 1. The brain as a problem-solver: Vicarious functioning -- The comparative method: the return to the individual -- Vicarious usage: Von Uexkull's worlds -- Biogeographical vicariance: diversity or innovation? -- Ecological vicariance -- 2. Perceiving and acting: Vicarious perception and movement -- Sensory substitution -- The vicarious gesture -- Systems for calculating and reading -- The vicariance toolbox: internal models, simulation, and emulation -- Mental imagery suggests new solutions -- Is the brain an optimist or a pessimist? -- Vicariance and the variety of conscious processes -- 3. The personal body, self, and identity: Vicarious identity: multiple identities -- The King's two bodies -- Multiple identities: strength or weakness? -- The virtual body: the Fregoli and Capgras delusions -- The avatar revolution -- Humanoids and robot companions -- 4. Vicariance and changing perspective: Does vicariance depend on multiple spatial reference frames? -- The neural basis of the ability to change perspective -- Cognitive strategies for navigation -- Inter-individual and inter-sex differences -- Social consequences: disorders of spatial vicariance -- Does vicariance govern geometric processing? -- An example of mathematical vicariance: the history of imaginary numbers -- Changing perspective: how many strategies? -- The neural basis of changes in perspective -- Many roads lead to one decision -- Part II. Ontogenesis and plasticity -- 5. The stages of vicariance: How vicariance develops in children -- Restoration and maturation of vicarious functioning -- Mental isolation destroys vicariance -- 6. Vicariance and brain plasticity: Do adults also experience critical periods? -- Experience and plasticity -- The bottleneck hypothesis -- Mental and motor imagery influence the brain in the same way that experience does -- The difference between rehabilitation and remediation -- Compensating age-related deficits -- Part III. Vicariance and sharing emotions -- 7. Sympathy and empathy: Vicariance and emotions -- A spatial theory of the difference between sympathy and empathy -- Suppressing emotions to help others -- 8. Vicarious emotion: Vicarious pain -- Vicarious traumatization -- Attachment -- Ostracism hurts -- Altruism, compassion, shame -- Lying and loyalty: respecting social norms -- Part IV. Vicarious learning -- 9. Vicarious learning: The legacy of comparative psychology -- Learning by vicarious reinforcement -- Mastery learning through vicarious activity -- Bandura's theory of vicarious learning -- Vygotsky and the effect of social context -- La Garanderie's theory of mental movement -- Cognitive modification of learning -- Epilogue. The vicarious brain, creator of worlds: The many facets of vicariance -- The odd couple: universal and particular -- Serendipity: an example of vicarious creativity -- Vicarious actor or spectator? -- Vicariance and metaphor -- Catachresis -- Vicarious money -- Different societies with a similar milieu -- The scapegoat: a vicarious substitute? -- Democracy and vicariance -- Utopia: the creation of other possible worlds -- Vicariance and resilience -- Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde: the two sides of vicariance |
