The Royal Society has just released a fantastic collection of articles aimed to introduce both the cutting edge of neuroscience and the sometimes fierce debates sparked by its implications.
The collection covers everything from neural interfaces to neuroethics and the articles are written by some of the leading lights in brain research.
This publication is a collection of essays that together provide a primer of current developments in neuroscience and highlight interesting issues and questions for society and policy. The essays, authored by leading experts in neuroscience, bioethics, and science and technology policy, review the state of development of neuroscience and neurotechnology – such as neuroimaging, neuropsychopharmacology, and neural interfaces – and discuss the translation of this knowledge into useful applications. The authors discuss their own views on how developments might impact on society, examining some of the opportunities and risks, as well as the ethical questions and governance issues.
The collection has been dubbed ‘Brain Waves Module 1: Neuroscience, society and policy’ and apparently three other ‘modules’ are on their way.
You can see previews of the other modules from the links at the bottom of the collection’s web page and if they’re as good as this first one, they should make for a fantastic scientific introduction to our current understanding of the brain.
Link to Royal Society first Brain Waves collection.
Mind Hacks 
what about neuroaesthetics? They seem to have forgotten that entirely, and who doesn’t want a beautiful brain?
Hi Vaughan, the link doesn’t seem to work, but here’s one which does:
http://royalsociety.org/General_WF.aspx?pageid=4294970711&terms=neuroscience&fragment=&SearchType=&terms=neuroscience
Best,
Alex