Quick links from the past week in mind and brain news:
Ex-automotive engineer is attempting to understand the brain in terms of thermodynamics and energy transfer.
Trying to describe the taste of wine in flowery language may ruin memory for its taste.
Scientists discover brain areas for understanding sarcasm. Full text of scientific paper is at this PDF.
Anorexia ‘caused by brain not society‘ claims report. Presumably society has no effect on the brain and we are all brains in vats.
It’s always good to see the annual ‘downloading the brain nearly here‘ story come round again. Presumably foot downloading will be tested first.
“The unpalatable truth is that falling in love is, in some ways, indistinguishable from a severe pathology“. Drug companies to market anti-love medication any day now.
Mothers’ ability for reading babies’ emotions more important than economic status for successful development.
Politicians take note: Charisma by numbers!
Review of the biography of the inventor of lobotomy from the British Medical Journal.
Mind Hacks 
“Drug companies to market anti-love medication any day now.”
But Vaughan, don’t you know:
“There ain’t no cure for love /
There ain’t no cure for love /
All the rocket ships are climbing through the sky /
The holy books are open wide /
The doctors working day and night /
But they’ll never ever find that cure, /
That cure for love” (Leonard Cohen)
This paper explored this issue a while back:
Art and memory: a 7-year follow-up of herpes encephalitis in a professional artist – N Stanhope, MD Kopelman – Neurocase, 2000
I’ve met the patient and seem some of his stuff – really interesting. On a related note, Prof Kopelman was on Channel 4 news and quoted in the Guardian discussing the ‘piano man’. A curious case.