Skip Navigation

Brain 2005 128(4):948-952; doi:10.1093/brain/awh468
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Zeman, A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Zeman, A.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

Book review

NEUROLOGY AND THE ARTS

Edited by Frank Clifford Rose

2004. London: Imperial College Press.

Price £65.00 ISBN 1860943683

MEMORY IN LITERATURE

By Suzanne Nalbantian

2003. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

Price £15.99 ISBN 1403966877

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ART AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONSCIOUS BRAIN

By Robert Solso

2005: Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.

Price £29.95 ISBN 0262194848

THE COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE OF MUSIC

Edited by Isabelle Peretz and Robert Zatorre

2003. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Price £35.00 ISBN 0198525206

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Secret Harmonies: neurology and the arts

(i) Imagination, art and science

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

Albert Einstein, What I Believe

What sets apart us is a life in the mind, the ability to imagine.

Robin Dunbar, The Human Story


The arts are a puzzle. The practical utility of science scarcely needs arguing: physics, chemistry, geology, biology, engineering and medicine clearly serve human health and comfort, as well as satisfying our curiosity about the world. But why are so many of us drawn to the concert hall and the theatre, to galleries, bookshops—and then to the comfiest armchair—where we devote ourselves to the lengthy and apparently unproductive task of contemplation? The cultivated reader might be surprised, even indignant, that this awkward question should be posed: surely music, art and literature are highly valued pursuits in every human society, true human universals. . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Adam Zeman

Division of Clinical Neurosciences, The University of Edinburgh


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?