Book and media reviews from the journal Science, edited by Valerie Thompson.

Valerie Thompson, Editor

Posts tagged with "Neuroscience"

• Book Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology

  To better treat brain disorders, we must look beyond biology

  15 April, 2019

  I was a teenager when I first read Oliver Sacks. I was enchanted, and I read him whenever possible in college and afterward. Sacks could take a simple compound, a patient, a hospital, an island, a situation, or a human condition and could draw out of each wider inferences that felt true. What’s more, his… Read More
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  Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction
  Judith Grisel

  Podcast Neuroscience

  PODCAST: Q&A with Judith Grisel, author of Never Enough

  21 February, 2019

  For neuroscientist Judith Grisel, addiction is more than a professional interest. A former addict herself, in her new book she integrates the latest research on addiction with candid insights about her own past drug and alcohol abuse. This week on the Science podcast, Grisel discusses the opioid epidemic, risk factors for addiction, and what an… Read More
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  The New Mind Readers: What Neuroimaging Can and Cannot Reveal About Our Thoughts
  Russell A. Poldrack

  Book Neuroscience

  The New Mind Readers

  4 September, 2018

  Mind reading is usually thought of as a magician’s party trick. Yet advances in brain imaging have revived interest in this seemingly fictional feat. Can neuroimaging be used in court to show that a person is telling the truth or is in pain? What can neuroimaging tell us about what people think or how a… Read More
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  The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist
  Ben Barres

  Book Neuroscience, Science lives

  The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist

  4 September, 2018

  In 2007, Stanford University neuroscientist Ben Barres published an essay comparing the experiences of female and male scientists. What made this essay noteworthy was that he wrote from personal experience. Barres, an accomplished researcher, was assigned female at birth and transitioned to male in 1997 at the age of 43. He lived openly as a… Read More

• Book Neuroscience, Physiology, Sleep Science

  From groggy teenagers to fatal insomnia, two tomes tackle the science of slumber

  20 August, 2018

  Many of us have an ambivalent relationship with sleep. Although acknowledging its necessity, we begrudge these stolen hours of existence. Two new books provide a fresh perspective on this poorly understood phenomenon. Rather than being an “imperfection of our nature,” as extolled by physician Wilson Phillip in 1833, sleep emerges as critical to healthy bodily… Read More

• Book Case Studies, Neuroscience

  In the tradition of Oliver Sacks, two tomes investigate rare brain conditions

  31 July, 2018

  The case report is dead. At least, it seems all but so in the realm of evidence-based medicine. It is thus thoroughly refreshing to read Helen Thomson’s Unthinkable: An Extraordinary Journey Through the World’s Strangest Brains and Eric R. Kandel’s The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves, two ambitious books that draw… Read More
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  The Neuroscience of Emotion: A New Synthesis
  Ralph Adolphs and David J. Anderson

  Book Neuroscience

  A pair of neuroscientists finds that investigating emotions is easier done than said

  18 June, 2018

  Ask a roomful of neuroscientists to define the term “emotion” and you will trigger a lively discussion. Some will argue that emotions involve conscious experiences that can be studied only in humans. Others might counter that insects and other invertebrates exhibit some of the emotion building blocks seen in mammals. Some will contend that different… Read More
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  Finding Einstein’s Brain
  Frederick E. Lepore

  Book Einstein, Neuroanatomy, Neuroscience

  Finding Einstein’s Brain

  4 June, 2018

  On the day of Albert Einstein’s death, an April morning in 1955, the pathologist Thomas Harvey performed an autopsy and, controversially, took possession of the physicist’s brain. Days later, Harvey convinced Einstein’s closest relatives of his purpose: to retain the brain for scientific research. Three decades passed, however, until the first work on Einstein’s brain… Read More
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  Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain
  Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

  Book Neuroscience

  PODCAST: Q&A with Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, author of Inventing Ourselves

  24 May, 2018

  Elusive, evasive, and uncommunicative, the human adolescent is among the most enigmatic subjects ever to be studied. This week on the Science podcast, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore delves into the teenage brain, revealing the extraordinary features that define this transitional state in human development. To hear the rest of the show, visit the Science podcast page. Read More
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  How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
  Michael Pollan

  Book Consciousness, Neuroscience, Psychopharmacology

  A revival in the scientific study of psychedelics prompts a journalist to take a trip

  7 May, 2018

  Known for his writing on plants and food, Michael Pollan, in his latest book, How to Change Your Mind, brings all the curiosity and skepticism for which he is well known to a decidedly different topic: the psychedelic drugs d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin. In addition to being a balanced piece of journalistic science… Read More