The Neuroscience of Freedom and Creativity

emotional functions and memory. They include the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the hypothalamus.
Mind
Composite of cognitive faculties that enables consciousness, thinking, reasoning, perception, and judgment.
Monetary policy
The procedure by which the monetary authority of a country (e.g., the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, or the European Central Bank) controls the supply of money. Its principal tools are the setting of interest rates and the monetization of public debt (by bond purchases and the like).
Mutation
Accidental change in a gene, a building block of the genome, the molecular carrier of biological inheritance.
Nativism
In psychology, nativism is the theoretical position that holds that certain abilities, such as perception and language, are hardwired into the brain at birth. This position is in contrast to empiricism. Political nativism is the position that favors the native inhabitants of a country and holds prejudice against immigrants.
Natural law
A system of law determined by nature, and thus universal, supposed to embody a number of inherited binding (ethical) rules of moral behavior.
Natural selection
The process by which in evolution biological traits become part of the organism of an animal species. A trait results from random mutation and becomes established in the population by genetic propagation.
Neuroimaging
Computer-based radiological scanning to visualize the structure and functions of the brain. Structural imaging (for example, magnetic resonance imaging [MRI]) is used to reveal the physical characteristics of brain structures and, for diagnostic purposes, the presence in them of pathological formations, such as tumors and vascular lesions. Functional imaging is used to reveal brain function. It is based on the radiographic exposure of changes in regional blood flow or metabolism assumed to result from, or to accompany, changes in neural activity. The principal functional imaging methods are positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
Neuron
An electrically excitable cell in the central nervous system that processes and transmits information by electrical and chemical signaling.
Neurotransmitter
An endogenous chemical substance, packed in synaptic vesicles, that transmits information from one neuron to another through their membranes. The most common excitatory neurotransmitters are glutamate, glycine, and the monoamines (dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonin). The most common inhibitory transmitter is gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA).
Numerosity
The conceptual and developmental basis of numbers and mathematics.
Ontogeny
Development of an organism or any of its parts.
Orbital prefrontal cortex, or orbitofrontal cortex
Cortex of the inferior part of the prefrontal cortex, immediately above the orbit of the eye.
Oscillatory activity
An electrical manifestation of re-entry in neural networks.
Perception
Organization, classification, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in the making of a mental representation of the external world.
Perception/action (PA) cycle
The circular cybernetic processing of information in the adaptation of the organism to its environment during sequential goal-directed behavior. In it, environmental changes elicit stimuli that are analyzed by sensory structures, which prompt the nervous system to produce reactive responses to those changes, which produce new outer changes, and so on. The processing flow of that adaptive cycle is reciprocated by counter-cyclical feedback flow from motor to sensory structures, to accelerate the adjustment process and to prepare sensory structures for expected, self-induced change. In the human, the PA cycle involves the perceptual (posterior) and executive (frontal) cortices engaged successively through the environment. A conversational dialogue is a vivid example of two PAs in action, where each interlocutor is the “environment” of the other.
Phenomenology
The philosophical study of subjective experience and consciousness. Initiated by Husserl, this school of thought centers on the appearances (phenomena) of the world in acts of consciousness by the subject. Phenomenology is of extraordinary descriptive value in psychiatry, where it critically assists diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. As applied to neuroscience, phenomenology can be readily differentiated from the Cartesian method, which sees the world as objects, sets of objects, and objects acting and