This is a book framed by grief—Broks’s wife died of cancer in middle age—but it is not the usual memoir of loss. Broks has long been a scientist of consciousness, and he sees death, as well as the miracle of waking life, through a bracingly unsentimental lens of neural activity. Which might make for a …
A chatty and engaging read on the topic of “neuroaesthetics” and the science behind beauty and pleasure. I recommend this book for anyone who ever wondered whether or not we evolved to appreciate and make art. Or for someone asking themselves why beauty and aesthetics are so central to the human experience. –Elise, Browsers Bookshop, …
Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, who has written accessibly about music and organization and attention and multitasking, now turns his focus on how we can interpret both visual and linguistic information. The first third of the book helps us appreciate that we are pattern seekers, which paradoxically makes us suckers for a deceptive graph or chart. Levitin …
