How is it that we can think highly abstract thoughts, seemingly fully detached from the actual, physical reality? This book offers an interdisciplinary introduction to embodied cognitive science, addressing the question of how the mind comes into being while actively interacting with and learning from the environment by means of the body.

1: Embodied Cognitive Science 2: Cognitive Science is Interdisciplinary 3: Cognition is Embodied 4: Cognitive Development and Evolution 5: Behavior is Reward-Oriented 6: Behvioral Flexibility and Anticipatory Behavior 7: Brain Basics from a Computational Perspective 8: Primary Visual Perception from the Bottom Up 9: Top-Down Visual Predictions Determine Perceptions 10: Multisesnory Interactions 11: Attention 12: Decision Making, Motor Control, and Concept Formation 13: Language, concepts, and abstract thought 14: Retrospection and future perspectives

`This is a very timely book. It rises to the challenge of providing a basic introduction to cognitive neuroscience, while being true to the fact that the brain is embodied. This book beautifully articulates intriguing puzzles about how our mind controls the body and how our body shapes the mind. In short, this book is a brilliant and accessible synthesis' Professor Karl J. Friston FMedSci, FRBS, FRS Wellcome Principal Fellow and Honorary Consultant in Neuropsychiatry Scientific Director: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging Institute of Neurology, UCL `The last three decades have seen advancements in the core issues of cognitive science. In 1991, in a talk given at CMU, Allen Newell posed the question:"how can the human mind occur in the physical universe?" This question was taken up by John Anderson as the title of his 2007 book which provided Anderson's answer to Newell's question. Science marches on and now Butz and Kutter provide the novice cognitive scientist an introduction to this set of deep and complex questions in the form of their very accessible and well-organized introductory textbook: How the Mind Comes Into Being. ' Professor Wayne Gray, Departments of Cognitive Science and Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA `This book is a true adventure for anyone interested in the relation between cognition and human behavior. The key assumption, that cognition can only be understood in relation to real-world experiences, is so convincingly expressed over the different chapters, that even if you want to resist this assumption, you will be thrilled by all the innovative insights about cognition ranging from Evolution, Development, Language to the hard question of Consciousness. A must-read for all students and scholars in the field of cognitive science and related disciplines to advance insights about Cognitive Science at the Brain, Cognitive, Computational, and Behavioral level. ' Prof. Dr. Harold Bekkering, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour

Provides an interdisciplinary perspective, helping the reader to develop an understanding of how the mind works that goes beyond disciplinary boundaries Adopts a computational approach, helping the reader to understand the mind on a functional level, in contrast to purely conceptual, verbalized levels Includes exercises and examples, helping the reader to consolidate the covered material and encouraging them to think 'outside of the box'

With a Diplom with honors in computer science with a minor in psychology (University of Würzburg, Germany, 08/2001) and a PhD in computer science (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA, 10/2004), Dr. Butz has been pursuing interdisciplinary, collaborative research in cognitive science for more than fifteen years. He has published more than fifty journal articles in various disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals including, for example, Neural Networks, Evolutionary Computation, Biological Cybernetics, Journal of Vision, Experimental Brain Research, PLoS ONE, and Psychological Review. Since 09/2011 Dr. Butz has been working as a full professor in Cognitive Modeling at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Esther Kutter has graduated with honors with a Master of Science in cognitive science (University of Tübingen, Germany, 09/2015). Her primary research focus lies in understanding how the brain represents the own body and how abstract concepts and categories are established and encoded purposefully for enabling intelligent, goal-directed behavior. She is currently continuing her research as a PhD student in neuroscience at the department of Animal Research at the University of Tübingen.

Provides an interdisciplinary perspective, helping the reader to develop an understanding of how the mind works that goes beyond disciplinary boundaries Adopts a computational approach, helping the reader to understand the mind on a functional level, in contrast to purely conceptual, verbalized levels Includes exercises and examples, helping the reader to consolidate the covered material and encouraging them to think 'outside of the box'