More more more on music!

The beat goes on. The new issue of Brain (Vol. 129, No 10) contains six papers on various neurological disorders of music processing, plus a great commentary by Oliver Sacks, “The power of music”. Since I personally work on neurobiological mechanisms underlying aesthetic preference formation, I was most intrigued by a paper by Nathalie [...]

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A short bibliographic guide to the emerging field of bioaesthetics

Many people are interested in the new, emerging field of neuroaesthetics – the attempt to use neuroscience to understand art and aesthetic behaviour. It is not an easy field to come to as an outsider, though. First of all, at the moment neuroaesthetics is not so much a coherent field (with textbooks and so on) [...]

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Inducing a shadow in the mind

A new report in Nature demonstrates that electrical stimulation of the temporoparietal junction in the brain induces a sensation of the presence of an illusory “shadowy person”. One of the hallmarks of certain forms of schizophrenia is just this phenomenon: the eery feeling of someone’s presence. Now, it has been demonstrated in a study using [...]

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Bowlby’s bulb

Can a brain scan reveal your relationship to your mother? According to a recent study, this may well be the case.
One of the theories in modern psychology is about the relationship between a child and her parent, especially the mother. Among such attachment theories is the original theory by John Bowlby. For a good description [...]

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The New Yorker on neuroeconomics

The September 18 issue of The New Yorker contains a short introduction to neuroeconomics. It is a nice enough article without to many obvious errors (the fact that the author attributes the striatum to the limbic system instead of to the basal ganglia is probably only of concequence to anatomists!). It tells the now familiar [...]

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Is Einstein’s brain really interesting?

What characterizes Albert Einstein’s brain? Why did he become a genius? Can we trace it down to brain-related factors? A growing literature on the relationship between intelligence and brain structure and function has demonstrated several relationships. Those studies, however, are typically based on comparison of brains of high versus mean IQ groups. Studying individual geniuses [...]

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A conscious veggie?

It should be mentioned that there is a highly controversial paper out in this week’s Science. Here, a study by Dr Adrian Owen shows that a patient that meets the criteria for vegetative state shows what can be thought of as signs of conscious life. You can see the MindHacks coverage of this story here. [...]

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The hidden dualism

In an interesting paper in the latest version of Progress in Neurobiology, Yuri I. Arshavsky from UCSD writes about the epistemological dualism that exists in modern neuroscience. basically, Arshavsky claims that there is a covert dualism in the way that neuroscientists are treating mind-related topics, especially the study of “consciousness”. Indeed, as he claims:
This covert [...]

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Aping monkey

Here is a great story: human imitation has been known to be present in newborns, supporting a notion of the human race being predisposed to social interaction. However, an obvious question of whether this is also the case in non-human primates below our closest evolutionary relatives has not been asked. Until now. In an excellent [...]

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Aggressive brain tumor treatment via fMRI

Brain tumors are a huge problem in neurosurgery. Not only do you have to take into consideration the delicate network of blood supply to the brain that can ultimately lead to further damage to the brain. In addition, the tumor is placed with in a meshwork of cognitive functions. Cutting too much on one side [...]

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