New cognitive neuroscience book

There is a new textbook in cognitive neuroscience coming in June, called Cognition, Brain and Consciousness. The book is edited by Bernard J. Baars and Nicole Gage, who have done a tremendous job with this book.
I would know, because I’m co-author on two of the chapters. The book is richly illustrated and written in a [...]

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From brain to culture

It was twenty years ago today. Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play.
Actually, last year it was 30 years ago that Nicholas Humphrey published his seminal paper “The social function of intellect” (pdf). Many people see this paper as the impetus to later work on the social brain hypothesis (pdf) and Theory of Mind. Humphrey [...]

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Most exciting discovery or theory of the past ten years

I am a sucker for lists, so please bear with me: In a forthcoming editorial, Shbana Rahman, the editor of the great journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, is celebrating the ten years anniversary of TICS by printing short reflections on what has been the most “exciting discovery or theory of the past ten years” by [...]

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Oxytocin is the window to the soul

Research on the role of oxytocin, a neuropeptide, in social cognition has generated much interest during the last few years. We have earlier written about oxytocin’s role in social attachment; together with vasopressin, another neuropeptide, oxytocin is thought to be critical for linking social signals to structures in the mesolimbic part of the brain responsible [...]

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A couple of interesting new things

I’ve just received a copy of Image, Eye and Art in Calvino, a new book on “the relationship between the visual and the textual” in Italo Calvino, edited by Birgitte Grundtvig, Martin McLaughlin, and Lene Waage Petersen. Together with Frederik Stjernfelt and Olaf B. Paulson I wrote a chapter for the book on the neurobiology [...]

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Kandel is optimistic

This year’s annual question at Edge was, “What are you optimistic about?”. Now, Brockman has asked Eric Kandel to outline the four neuroscience breakthroughs made in 2006 that makes him optimistic about our future possibility of understanding the brain. The first breakthrough is research into the role of microRNAs in the formation of synapses. The [...]

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Discussing the evolution of music

Back in September I briefly mentioned two recent papers in Music Perception on the evolution of music: Justus & Hutsler and McDermott & Hauser. As Darwin famously noted in The Descent of Man, from an evolutionary standpoint our ability to make music is “among the most mysterious with which [man] is endowed”. It is [...]

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