This chapter reviews the debates relating to the interface of climate change law and aesthetics. Global warming alters the aesthetic properties of nature, and additional aesthetic changes are precipitated by the mitigation and adaptation responses of impacted societies. Domestic legal systems already have a leading role in governing certain disputes that involve strong aesthetic elements, such as the location of wind turbines or seawall defences. The international legal system has established some regimes that explicitly engage with aesthetic values, such as the World Heritage Convention. Ben Richardson maps the views expressed in the growing scholarship on climate law’s encounters with aesthetics. The chapter also weighs different views on why aesthetic experiences might be important to better understanding the dangers of climate change, which mostly lie in the future and thus out of sight and out of mind.

Our brains are continuously changing and these changes alter brain functions. With maturation, there is growth and unfortunately, even with healthy aging, decline. Aging-related decrements affect neurons and their connectivity, neurotransmitter systems, and even support systems such as glia. Aging affects some brain regions (frontal lobes and hippocampi) more than others. This book reviews and discusses aging-related changes and their influence on the major neurobehavioral domains, beginning with reviews of aging-related changes in anatomy and physiology. Subsequent chapters review cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of aging-related changes in sensory perception (vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste) and cognitive functions (memory, language, motor planning, attention, executive functions, emotions, creativity). In each chapter, mechanisms that may account for these changes are discussed. Declines related to aging per se are distinguished from declines related to aging-associated diseases. Final chapters discuss what can potentially be done to slow or reverse aging-related decline of cognitive functions, including exercise, cognitive rehabilitation, and pharmacological agents. It is hoped this book will help clinicians differentiate between normal aging processes and brain diseases, reduce the adverse effects of brain aging, and stimulate further research on how adverse effects of brain aging can be reversed, stopped, modified, or best managed.

The core question in suicide prevention is: why does a person in a particular situation take their own life, while another person in the same situation would react in a different way? This chapter investigates to what extent and in which way neurocognitive studies may contribute to finding an answer to this question. The term 'neurocognitive' refers to the study of the relationship between the brain and behavior by utilizing specialized tests that have been designed to evaluate a wide variety of behavioral, cognitive and emotional domains. Thus, neurocognitive studies contribute to understanding how behavioral decisions following exposure to particular environmental stimuli relate to changes in brain functions. Such studies offer a great opportunity to measure and quantify cognitive functions, emotional states and behavioral repertoires through standardized questionnaires and testing. From such neurocognitive data, inferences are made regarding brain function and the localization of brain dysfunctions based on patterns of cognitive strengths and weaknesses. As conclusions from neuropsychological assessments are necessarily inferential, findings from neuropsychological investigations are commonly combined with those from neuroimaging (see next chapter) in order to fully understand the relationship between behavioral phenomena and changes in brain functions.