The Daily Rumpus
Get Overly Personal Emails
From Stephen Elliott
As science and technology dominate our lives more and more each day, those of us in the humanities find ourselves increasingly on the defensive.
One way to demonstrate the humanities’ relevance is with neuroscience. Brain scans not only show us concrete evidence of the ways novels affect our thoughts and emotions, but also give us exciting new insights into how we process literature.
...moreA sudden burst of improvisational creativity may feel almost supernatural in origin, but there’s a biological basis for it, say researchers.
How did they study it? By scanning the brains of freestyling rappers, of course.
...moreThey found that rapping memorized lyrics and rapping freestyle use entirely different parts of the brain.
“Since the 19th century people have speculated that the essence of human identity is stored in the connections between our neurons. Today we have the technology to find out if this is true.”
This year the Human Connectome Project will begin ambitiously mapping the “large-scale connections” of 1200 human brains.
...moreRebecca Saxe at TED, on sensing other’s thoughts, and on changing moral judgments using magnetic pulses.
...more